Teeth in the Grass
by Mrs.Monster
Summary: Too much wine, boredom and broken glass lead to an interesting shift in Molly's relationship with Sherlock. Well, I say relationship…
1. Chapter 1

_**Disclaimer: I own nothing related to **__**Sherlock**__**, no copyright infringement intended.**_

_**Title: Teeth in the Grass**_

_**Author: **_

_**Rating: NC-17 for sexual situations and some language. **_

_**Edited by: Myself**_

_**Summary: Too much wine, boredom and broken glass lead to an interesting shift in Molly's relationship with Sherlock. Well, I say relationship… **_

_**Author's Note: This disregards series two, which I have yet to have the pleasure of watching. Takes place post- **__**The Great Game**__**. **_

_**Teeth in the Grass**_

_**One**_

**..**

_How in the bleeding hell did I let those two talk me into this? _Molly Hooper thought, her small fingers wrapped around the neck of the second bottle of wine she'd opened that night. She spilled the crimson liquid into her glass, sweet red sloshing over the edges as she nearly emptied the bottle. With a thunk, she slammed it down onto the scarred surface of her kitchen table and glared up at the ceiling, another loud _bang! _echoing down layers of wood and plaster.

The honorable Detective Inspector Lestrade and the good Doctor John Watson had, after the _Jim from IT _incident, managed to convince her that the best course of action, to ensure her safety, was to move into the basement flat of 221 Baker Street. What safer place to live than just a few floors under the highly trained John Watson and his eerily intelligent, slightly insane, and at this particular moment, very, _very _annoying flat mate, the one and only Sherlock Holmes?

_Oh, I dunno, _Molly thought, taking a long drink of wine and nearly draining half her glass. _A cabin in the middle of flipping Siberia would be nice and safe. And certainly better than this._

Finishing off the second bottle, Molly set it next to the empty first before standing from her chair shakily, determined on the third she had hidden away in the cabinet above the refrigerator. _It's a good thing this stuff isn't very strong, _she thought as she pulled the bottle down, _or I very well may be drunk by now. _Molly staggered back to the kitchen table and sank into her chair, folding bare legs under her.

It was the seeing him every day that was driving her mad. Before, she'd see him maybe once or twice a week, when he'd come in to use her lab, or examine some corpse. Now, she ran into him on a daily basis, and her pathetic little crush would come rushing forward, wiping out years of intelligence and education, turning her into a bumbling idiot.

Then there was the guilt. It would creep into her thoughts every time she spoke to either of them, John or Sherlock. No matter how innocent her role may have been in _The Great Game, _as John had named it when he wrote up his blog entry about the whole thing; the fact that she indeed _had _a role at all ate her up inside. They'd both nearly died, not to mention that old woman and half of the tenants of her apartment building that had, at the hands of her 'boyfriend'.

Her biggest problem with Jim, she'd thought, was that he'd turn out to be gay, like Sherlock had said, not that he'd turn out to be gay _and _insane. With a sigh, Molly picked the cork screw up from the table, and set about opening the third bottle. She managed to get the thing in, but with her shaking hands, was unable to pull it out. She slammed the bottle down on the table and slumped back in her chair.

They hadn't even let her bring her cat with her. Mrs. _Hudson _didn't allow animals. Sure, Sherlock could keep a severed bloody _head_ in his refrigerator, but she'd had to give Toby to her sister.

"And her girls are such little brats," she said out loud to the empty apartment, tremors shaking her voice. Tears cut down her face and Molly allowed herself a single broken sob.

She hated her life. Hated living in a dank basement apartment, the wonder twins two floors above her and meddling Mrs. Hudson always poking her head in. She hated not having her cat. She hated being afraid that one day, Jim, or rather _James Moriarty, _would come back for her. And most of all, she hated that she was afraid that when he did come back, Sherlock wouldn't be around to save the day.

She felt unwanted, like a burden. Undesirable, most of all. The only man to show any interest in her in recent years had just been using her to get information on his arch enemy. Seriously, who actually _had _arch enemies? And the man that she really wanted only ever looked at her when he wanted something from her, to manipulate her, and really? How did that make him any different than Jim? Molly shook her head. _There's loads different between Sherlock and Jim._

"And I hate you, wine, for making me think about this shite when you're supposed to be helping me forget." Molly picked up one of the empty bottles and flung it angrily to the side, ignoring the loud shattering of the glass as she buried her face into her folded arms.

**..**

Sherlock Holmes was bored. And when Sherlock Holmes was bored, interesting, and quite often dangerous, things tended to happen. _If only John didn't have that ridiculous rule about no open flames in the flat, _Sherlock thought, _then we'd really be having some fun. _He pulled the fridge open and poked around inside, looking passed the head _(he really needed to conclude that experiment) _and the jar of fingernails he couldn't quite remember procuring, which was ridiculous because Sherlock Holmes never forgot _anything. _His gun hung limply at his side, three bullets still left in the clip, as he searched for something else to use for target practice. He'd certainly learned better than to use the wall after the fit both John and Mrs. Hudson had thrown last time.

Sherlock paused, and then stood upright when he was sure he heard the sound of glass shattering a few floors down, in the basement flat that was now occupied by Doctor Molly Hooper. John and Lestrade had thought it a good idea, fearing that Moriarty would attempt to eliminate her, being that she'd seen him up close and in person. They were right to be worried, and Sherlock was glad to have her safe- she _was _his in at Bart's, after all, and it was flattering the way she fawned after him, and blushed whenever he complimented her. She was endearing, that was it. And, as with John, Sherlock found that he rather liked having her around.

He wondered what could be going on down there. _Maybe it's something life threatening! _Sherlock perked up at the thought. What a way to occupy his mind. Thanks to his insatiable curiosity, he found his feet carrying him down the stairs, shoes muffled against the carpeting. The door to Molly's flat was slightly ajar, and he could see harsh florescent lighting shining from within, which meant that she was in the kitchen. A frightening thought when it came to Molly, really. John had already had to extinguish three of her little kitchen disasters. He could now hear what sounded like broken sobbing coming from within the apartment which prompted him to push the door the rest of the way open with the tips of his fingers. Sherlock poked his head through the doorway, immediately scanning the flat for danger, and was greatly disappointed when he found none. Still, why was Molly crying? He wandered further into the sitting area of Molly's flat, and then followed the light into the small kitchen. Sherlock blinked, confused by what he was seeing.

Molly was sitting at her kitchen table wearing nothing but a loose top that was sliding down her shoulders and a pair of knickers. An empty wine bottle set next to her elbow on the table, the remnants of another broken to her right, where she'd obviously thrown it at the wall. _And that would explain the sound, _Sherlock thought. _How dull. _ She was currently trying to work the cork of a third bottle free with her teeth, tears running freely down her face.

"Molly?"

The girl in question started, nearly dropping the full bottle of wine she was trying to open. She turned tear-filled eyes toward him, grimacing, wiping at the wetness coating her cheeks.

"Go away, Sherlock." Her gaze went back to the bottle that she set on the table. Using the hem of her shirt, Molly wiped at her face, revealing her flat stomach and purple knickers. She was obviously very drunk, and Sherlock's brow furrowed- Molly wasn't a drinker.

"Is everything alright?" He edged his way further into the kitchen. Half of him was saying to listen to her and to return to his own apartment, while the other half of him was recalling how dreadfully bored he'd been a few minutes previous. Now, as he watched Molly smooth down her shirt with shaking hands, he realized that he was no longer bored. He was curious as to what could possibly be wrong with the normally sunny girl- other than her perpetual lack of male companionship, and her impending spinster status, of course. All of that was given, and had never seemed to bother her before. Surely she couldn't be so upset over being _alone _of all things.

"Oh, yes. Everything is just dandy, Sherlock," she said, with a hysterical little laugh. "Now will you go away?"

"No, I don't think I will."

**..**

Molly groaned as she watched him pull out the chair opposite her and sat down gracefully, long arms coming to rest on the table, the sleeves of his pale green shirt rolled to the elbows. She was slightly startled to see the gun that he held almost absently in one hand. He fixed those annoyingly blue eyes on her, and as always, she squirmed under his scrutiny. Pushing her hair away from her face, Molly tried to meet his gaze as levelly as she could. Sherlock set the gun down with a _clunk_ on the table.

"What do you want, Sherlock?" her voice was quiet, slurring heavily.

"Why are you crying?" he asked.

Molly let out a very inelegant snort. "As if _you _care."

This seemed to make Sherlock pause, face growing even more puzzled.

"Molly, tell me what is wrong."

She slammed the bottle of wine back down onto the table, giving up trying to pick the stubborn cork out with her fingernails. "What _isn't _wrong, you idiotic man?"

Sherlock blinked at her, and she laughed at the look on his face, the confused expression he'd always mocked others for. _He really was clueless, wasn't he? _Molly thought. She'd already begun though, and with the wine loosening her tongue, she found that she couldn't stop.

"I'm stuck _here _in this damp, dirty basement, hiding from my criminally insane, gay ex-boyfriend, seeing _you _every bloody day, and I don't even have my cat. I miss Toby." Her lips were trembling again, tears flowing, and Sherlock shifted uncomfortably.

"And what is so terrible about seeing me every day?" he asked, really in all innocence.

"You really don't have a clue, do you?" she asked, shaking her head at him. "It's torture. Cruel and unusual punishment."

Sherlock was growing very uncomfortable with the direction of this conversation. Feelings and emotions were not exactly his area, and he had the horrible sense that that was where this was headed.

Molly was waving her arms as she spoke now, swaying drunkenly in her chair. "You're like this robot man! You don't feel _anything. _How can a person not feel anything?" Molly gasped, wide eyes taking him in. "Maybe you're _not _human. That would explain the ungodly good looks." She shrunk back in her chair, shirt sliding lower on her shoulders, nearly revealing the tops of her breasts. She hiccupped, which enticed a small giggle.

"I most certainly _am _human, thank you very much," Sherlock said, growing offended. "And I do feel."

"Excitement and glee. And over what? _Murder. _There's something not right about that, Sherlock." Her wide, shining eyes were still fixed on him, and Sherlock began to squirm slightly. Which was ridiculous. Sherlock Holmes did not _squirm. _He made other people squirm. "You need help," Molly was saying, and then she gasped. "Maybe John and I should stage an intervention." She nodded seriously, and then stood from the table, taking the still full bottle of wine with her.

Sherlock was silent at the table, watching her. The cotton shirt she was wearing was gray, and barely covered her knickers, her shapely, smooth looking legs bare, a fact she seemed to have forgotten. Molly's bare toes curled against the cold linoleum floor. Sherlock noticed that she had a freckle on the back of her right knee; just on the dip and he felt something odd somewhere in his middle, then shook his head. Those were types of things that he did _not _notice. Was he really that bored? That his mind would begin to resort to base emotions to occupy itself was an alarming thought.

Molly set the bottle into the sink, and then braced her hands on the counter, bowing her head slightly, wishing that the room would stop spinning. She shouldn't have said that to him. It hadn't been nice, and was just a step above Sergeant Donovan calling him 'freak' all the time. She turned and leaned back against the counter.

"Listen, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that you weren't human."

Sherlock tilted his head in acceptance of the apology, still very confused. He watched Molly leaning against the scarred counter, and took in her drunken stance, trying to force his mind back to its working form. Her shoulders were bare and slightly hunched, mousy brown hair spilling over them, eyes trained on him, lips pressed together, knees subtly turned in. His eyebrows shot up, and he thought that he must have the answer now.

"You're sexually frustrated," he stated with satisfaction, convinced that he'd solved the problem causing her odd behavior.

Molly choked a little. "I beg your pardon?"

"That's why you're behaving this way." Sherlock waved a hand at her disheveled state.

"You know, you're completely right. Spot on. I _am _frustrated. And it's yourfault."

Sherlock's look of smug satisfaction shattered, and he was left dumbfounded again.

"_My _fault?" he asked, incredulous.

"Yes, your fault. The only man that I've dated in recent history, I dated to make you jealous, and it turns out, that he was only dating me, to get closer to _you. _It all comes back to you, doesn't it?"

"You dated Moriarty to make me jealous?"

"_Jim_. And, yes. As if you didn't know. You took such great pleasure in tearing me down over it."

"I didn't-"

"Oh, save it, Sherlock. _Trying to save me the pain? _I don't think I'd ever been so humiliated in my entire life."

_Wait until you remember all of this in the morning_, Sherlock thought.

Molly took a step toward the table, but Sherlock held up a hand to stop her, remembering the glass. He pushed back from the table, safely skirting the shards, and went to her. Molly craned her neck to look up at him.

"Should I apologize here? All of this is very beyond my... area, Molly."

"You're damned right you should apologize," she said, emphasizing her point to a poke to his chest. Molly could feel the muscles under his shirt, not bulging, but firm all the same. "A-and for always manipulating me and what I feel for you to get what you want. It's not right." She poked him again, but this time Sherlock caught her hand with his, his cool fingers grasping her own warm ones.

Sherlock was experiencing that odd feeling again. Instead of a short twinge, this time it stayed, fluttering around his insides. He understood the mechanics of attraction perfectly, but what was throwing him was the fact that he himself was feeling it. He was a self-professed sociopath, a high functioning one, and sociopaths did _not _feel sexual attraction. Sherlock Holmes did _not _feel sexual attraction. All that mattered was the work, that's what he'd always told himself.

But as he stood there, looking down at a fuming Molly Hooper, grasping her suspended hand with his own, the impossible feeling was _fluttering _inside of him. Something wasn't right here. Maybe he'd been poisoned. Yes! That had to be it! He'd been slipped some sort of exotic poison that was making him want to... kiss... Molly? This was ridiculous. Before he realized it, Sherlock was speaking, words tumbling from his lips that were foreign to him.

"Since you seem to think that _I _am the cause of all of your frustrations, perhaps I should be the one to help you with them."

It was Molly's turn to seem completely puzzled. "Excuse me?" she asked, curling her fingers in his grasp. "Are you saying... what are you saying?"

Sherlock arched a brow down at her. "What do you think I'm saying?"

"Do you want to... have sex with me?" she asked, the last in a whisper.

"Of course not-"

Molly visibly deflated.

"-you're far too intoxicated. Next time."

Sherlock knew that he should not be saying these things to her; she likely wouldn't remember any of this conversation when she woke up in the morning, but he seemed unable to stop. Something was most certainly wrong. Sherlock Holmes was _always _in control.

"Next-next time?"

"What I am proposing is that we merely... help one another. From time to time."

"What-?"

"I grow bored, you see. And as both John and Mrs. Hudson seem to become annoyed with the ways I keep myself amused, I must find other... means."

"So I'm going to be your... amusement?" Molly seemed to be growing angry, and Sherlock had the feeling that he was saying something wrong.

"And you're attracted to me, yes?" Sherlock rushed forward.

"Well... yes, but-"

"Does what I am proposing not make sense?"

"Yes, I suppose so, but-"

"But what?"

"But... nothing, I guess."

"Good. Now then- Mmf!" The rest of his sentence was cut off by Molly throwing her free arm around his neck, standing on her tip-toes and kissing him soundly. Tense at first, eyes wide open, Sherlock slowly relaxed into the first kiss he'd experienced since the age of twelve, when he'd experimented with one of Mummy's friend's daughters. That wasn't nearly as pleasurable as this, and he chalked it up to his expanded hormones, which seemed to come rushing forward now. He'd kept them bottled up and locked off throughout his pubescent years, and they seemed to be bursting free now, as Molly Hooper tangled her fingers in the hair at his neck, her other hand still twined with his, now pressed between their bodies. The back of his hand was pressed against her soft breast, and Sherlock could feel her nipple harden. He let his free hand drift down to grip her hip.

His heart was racing in his chest, and he struggled to gain control of himself. Sherlock felt himself growing erect in his trousers, and he came to the conclusion that if he couldn't gain control of _himself, _he could certainly gain control of the _situation_. Sex was out of the question- Molly was in no state to knowingly consent, and he wasn't one to take advantage in that way. To gain use of a lab, yes, he'd throw around a few complements, but that would be going too far. Sherlock pulled his mouth away from Molly's, and, grasping both of her hands now, took a few steps back. He could see the question on Molly's face, the emotion underneath the intoxicated sheen in her eyes.

Sherlock walked forward, forcing Molly to take stumbling steps back until she was pressed against the counter. In his mind, Sherlock scanned over all of the things that he knew would pleasure a woman. His own arousal was straining in his pants, but it would just have to wait. Tonight, he'd take care of Molly, and then, when she was sober, they could explore moving on to other things. Sherlock released Molly's hands, and slid his own down the curves of her body to her hips, and then he turned her around, her back pressing against his front. Taking her hands again, he moved them until her palms were against the edge of counter. Using his own, he curled her fingers over it, squeezing slightly, wordlessly telling her that she was to hang on.

This was _very_ much outside of Sherlock's comfort area. He felt as though he were possessed, unable and unwilling to stop himself. He could rationalize it all he wanted, but Sherlock couldn't fool himself. His hands slid up Molly's arms and down her back to her hips again and he slowly pulled her lower half away from the counter. Her back was arched, her bottom pressed against his erection, and it would be very easy to release himself from his trousers, pull her knickers aside, and lose his virginity to the mousey pathologist. Sherlock wouldn't allow himself to do that, though, and for the first time, he cursed his mother for raising him a gentleman.

Generally, as a rule, Sherlock wasn't a fan of firsts, or new things in general, but as he pulled Molly's knickers to the side and let his fingers glide over her warm sex, he found that he really _did _enjoy this first. It was as much experimenting and exploring as bringing her pleasure, but his actions were bringing soft little moans from Molly's mouth, and Sherlock realized that he didn't want her to stop making those noises. Small mewls as his deft finger tips found the small bundle of nerves his extensive knowledge of the human body told him would be there. What that knowledge _didn't _inform him of was the way her body would arch up against him when he used his fingers to flick there, or that her knuckles would turn white-tight as she gripped the counter harder.

"_Christ, _Sherlock," Molly moaned as he continued to explore that small area, and he realized that something seemed to be happening. The free hand that had been resting next to her right one on the counter smoothed its way up her arm to pull her shirt further down her shoulder, revealing one of her pert breasts. Maneuvering his arm under hers, he cupped it, then dragged his thumb over her nipple, which tightened and pebbled under his touch. Molly was moaning loudly now, and Sherlock knew that something was definitelyhappening. With a shudder and a final cry, Molly slumped forward, breathing heavily, and Sherlock slid his hand from her knickers and smoothed her shirt back over her.

Sherlock stood back from her; head cocked to the side, taking in and recording Molly's every reaction. That was when he noticed that she was beginning to slump toward the counter even more, and her legs seemed to be sliding out from under her. He stepped forward and caught her before she could fall to the floor, and, stepping around the broken glass on the floor, carried her out of the kitchen and to the flat's small bedroom. He laid a now sleeping Molly on her bed, and then stepped back, briefly considering climbing into bed with her, before shaking his head. Regardless of what the protocol was for this type of situation, Sherlock only slept in his own bed. He grabbed a soft throw from the end of her bed and spread it over her, before slipping out of the bedroom, then from the apartment, closing the door behind him.

**..**

Molly woke the next morning with a terrible pounding in her head and a pleasant jelly-sensation in her legs, as if she'd had an intense...

She shot straight up in bed, remembering the activities of the night before. Remembering Sherlock. _Touching _her. Most of what was said was muddled, but God, she remembered the feeling. His hands on her body, practically bending her over the counter, and their kiss... She'd thought of kissing Sherlock Holmes many times, but never once did she think that she would be so drunk that she'd barely be able to remember it.

_What now? _Molly wondered. She had no idea where this left them. If only she could remember what they'd been talking about. Molly remembered with mounting embarrassment her tiny little break down and Sherlock walking into the middle of it. So, what had the rest been? Some type of pity thing? How was she supposed to face him after this?

Molly rolled out of bed, shuffled over to her dresser and pulled out her most comfortable pair of sweat pants. At least she had the day off to wallow in her shame. Practically dragging herself out of her bedroom, she frowned at the broken glass littering her kitchen floor, but ignored it for the time being. She'd clean it up later. Molly fell face-first onto her sofa and blindly reached for the telly remote.

**..**

Molly hadn't seen hide nor hair of Sherlock Holmes and five days, and she was furious. It wasn't like she was actively seeking him out, but they lived in the same apartment building for Christ sakes. She wasn't sure if he was avoiding her, or whether he was just busy with a case, but the least he could do was spare a text to the woman he'd... done things with the weekend previous.

She was currently hunched over the corpse of one Mrs. Cora Hopper, picking out and weighing the old woman's internal organs. Cause of death was apparent heart attack, but Molly was nothing if not thorough. She spoke clearly into the microphone mounted next to her, and performed the autopsy with practiced ease.

_See? _she told herself. _You're a strong, professional woman. Not a stupid mouse, so stop acting like one._

After stitching Cora Hopper's chest cavity closed, she stripped her bloody gloves off and washed up, made a few notes in the seventy year old woman's file before heading back to her lab. Molly pushed the door open, file tucked under her arm, and stopped dead in her tracks.

There, sitting on a stool like he owned it, leaning over _her _microscope, was Sherlock Holmes. John Watson stood behind him, slightly to his left, arms clasped behind his back. John looked up and smiled when he noticed her standing there, but it wasn't until she let the door fall shut with a clang did Sherlock look up. His face betrayed nothing of their activities and he just smiled at her blandly. Molly walked over to the large table that took up the center of her laboratory and put Mrs. Hopper's file down with a soft slap.

"Ah, Molly. Would you mind running up and getting me a cup of coffee? Black, two sugars, as you know."

Molly's mouth literally fell open. Was he serious? He couldn't be serious.

Molly could tell from his expectant expression that he was completely serious. She looked away, pressing her lips together to keep from screaming at him, then shuffled Mrs. Hopper's file into the pile that was already lying on the table. It was only until she'd filed them away that she felt calm enough to speak without spewing obscenities at the man who was still sitting there, watching her. Molly slammed the drawer of the file cabinet shut.

"Get your own blasted coffee, Sherlock!" Okay, maybe she wasn't as calm as she thought. "And next time, ask permission before you use my goddamn microscope!" With that, she turned on her heel, and marched from the room, slamming the heavy door behind her.

**..**

Both men watched the angry doctor storm from the room, and then turned to look at each other.

"I do wonder what that was about," Sherlock said.

"Perhaps she's finally grown tired of you diminishing her doctorate to a secretarial status?" John said, leaning against the shelves behind him. He was hiding a small grin- it really was nice to see Molly stand up to Sherlock for once.

"Nonsense. I don't treat her like she's my secretary."

"Yes, you do."

Sherlock's brow furrowed and he paused momentarily before turning back to the microscope. The morning after the night in Molly's flat, Lestrade had finally called him with something of interest, and he'd rushed out immediately. It was a truly intriguing case with all of his favorite elements- murder, mystery, and mayhem. He was so close to cracking this case that he could taste it, and nothing, or no _one, _ever came before his work. Ever. He'd never even considered that Molly would be upset with him.

No, it couldn't be him. It must be something else that's troubling her, and she'd merely taken it out on him. John was wrong, as usual. With a small smile at his reasoning, he bent back over the microscope and the lens that he'd been examining.

**..**

It was Thursday night, the day after the little confrontation in her lab. Molly pushed open the door to her flat, juggling a bag carrying Chinese take-away and a box full of files she'd brought home to straighten out. She dropped everything onto her kitchen table, and fetched a plate from its cabinet, blushing as she leaned over the counter, remembering the way her hands had gripped the edge in that exact spot. Settling at the table with her dinner, she ate quickly, then set her dishes to the side. Molly pulled the mucked up files from the box- _interns_, she thought with a shake of her head- and spread them out in front of her.

She hadn't been at it for even an hour yet when she heard the door to her flat bang open, bouncing off the wall, before it was pushed shut. Molly's heart jumped into her throat, and she waited, fully expecting to see Jim to walk around the corner into her kitchen. The man who did was only slightly more welcome.

"What are you doing here?" she asked as Sherlock strode into her kitchen, unwinding the scarf from around his neck. He didn't answer her as he slipped his coat off and hung it from the back of the kitchen chair he'd occupied the previous night, doing the same with his suit jacket. Molly watched him, growing increasingly brassed off, as he looked down at the files spread over her table. Her eyes widened in alarm when she realized that he was unbuttoning his white dress shirt.

"What _are _you doing?" she asked with alarm, unable to tear her eyes away from the wedge of pale chest he'd revealed.

This finally seemed to grab his attention, and his fingers stilled as he looked up at her. "Do you not remember our conversation the other night?" he asked, fingers still poised over his shirt buttons.

"I'm going to go with no," Molly said, leaning back in her chair.

"You and I agreed to help each other," Sherlock said bluntly. "I've been very... uncomfortable since the other night, and John and I just finished the Murphy case..." he trailed off, standing next to Molly's chair, looking down at her.

"And you were hoping, what? That you'd just show up here, especially after the yesterday, and we'd have sex?"

"Am I wrong?"

"God, no."

"Then perhaps you should stop talking and help me unbutton my shirt." Sherlock's slim fingers were back at his buttons. Molly stood, her body close to his, and batted his hands away. Her nimble fingers surprised her- she'd assumed she'd fumble and embarrass herself, but she could feel the stronger woman coming to the surface; the more confident woman. Molly had his shirt unbuttoned and was pushing it off his shoulders, and she was kissing him before it hit the floor.

Her fingers went to his soft hair, and his went to the buttons on her blouse, popping them free one by one, before sliding his hands inside to cup her breasts. Molly made a sound low in her throat. She couldn't believe this was happening. She'd spent a shameful amount of time fantasizing about it, but nothing in her wildest dreams lived up to the feel of Sherlock's dry hands with their long, reaching fingers on her skin as he pulled the cups of her bra down, baring her breasts. Sherlock pulled away, his look turning nearly calculating as he looked down at her. He maneuvered them back, until her behind was pressed against the table where she'd been previously sitting, and then his head dipped down, his gaze still curious, and dragged the flat of his tongue over her nipple.

Molly had no idea what this was for him. She'd begun to think that he couldn't even feel things like sexual desire, and had begun to hypothesize that he was actually asexual, and that maybe, to procreate, he pollinated like a flower. The thought brought a small giggle to her lips, and he looked up at her curiously.

"Something funny?" he nearly drawled.

"Not a thing," she said, shaking her blouse from her shoulders, letting it fall to the table under her. Sherlock's hands were down her back, working the zipper of her skirt, tugging it down and off. His hands smoothed back up her thighs. Electric sparks were igniting against her skin, tingling her nerves with every slide of his hands. Sherlock was pulling her knickers off and Molly was pulling his belt loose, sliding it free before tossing it aside. He reached the button and zipper of his suit pants before she could, and Molly leaned back on her hands. Sherlock was smiling that little half grin of his down at her, but Molly was watching his hands as he worked his button through the hole and slid his zipper down, finally pushing his pants and-

_Hey, what do you know? You were right. Sherlock's a boxer man, _Molly thought to herself, before he pushed those down as well and her mouth went dry and she pulled him down to her. His hands went to her hips and he lifted her up onto the table. Molly wrapped her legs around his slim hips, and reached out, wrapping her hand around him. Sherlock let out a sound that was somewhere between a growl and a hiss, and she looked up at him in surprise. His eyes were wide and he was watching as she stroked him, and Molly had a sudden thought. _Surely he wasn't..._

"Sherlock, have you done this before?" Molly asked, still stroking him in long fluid motions, looking up into his face. _Was that a blush?_

"I haven't... that is to say I've been... otherwise occupied," he said, looking at a point over her shoulder.

Molly didn't know what to make of this, of any of it. Here she was, about to have sex with the man she'd lusted after for several years now, and she had no idea where she stood. _Oh hell, we'll figure it out later._

Her hand slid across a smooth pale shoulder, and Molly cupped the back of his head and pulled him down to her, meeting his mouth with hers. He followed her down as she lay back on the table, bracing his hands on either side of her head. Molly helped guide him to her entrance, and held her breath as he slowly filled her. Sherlock's eyes were squeezed shut, then they snapped open and he stared down at her, completely still. He made an experimental move, a small thrust of his hips, and his grey blue eyes were wide, as if in shock.

Then he was off and moving. Hands curled into fists against the table top, he pulled almost all of the way out, before sliding smoothly back in, his exotic face unguarded for the first time since she'd met him. His hips moved sharply; skin slapping against skin, sweat making their bodies slick, no matter how cold her flat was. Molly felt pleasure spark electric in her body, shooting from her core to her fingertips. They both kept their eyes open, Sherlock's lips slightly parted, and small gasps of air in time with his thrusts. Molly's tongue slid along her bottom lip, Sherlock tracking its progress with his sharp eyes.

"Molly?"

"Ung?"

"I'm taking you to coffee after this," Sherlock said, punctuating each word with a thrust.

"O-okay," Molly said in return, the word coming out breathless as Sherlock twisted his hips experimentally.

"I know a great place just-"

"Shut. _Up_. Sherlock."

Shivers of excitement passed through their bodies, transmitted from where they were joined, and Molly ran her hands up Sherlock's chest. She repressed the smirk that tried to rise when his movements became wilder as she ran her fingertips over his abnormally small nipples. Molly felt the tell-tale tightening of pleasure low inside of her, and she ran her nails softly across Sherlock's skin, leaving light marks against the pale.

They were both so caught up that they didn't hear the light knock upon the door, nor did they hear the creak as it was pushed open slowly. But John Watson most certainly heard Molly's yell of "_Christ, _Sherlock, harder!" just as she began to hit her peak and the squeaking of the table as Sherlock complied, as he rounded the corner into the kitchen of Molly's flat.

He nearly fell over himself trying to scramble back out of the room, hands clapped over his eyes, with a shout of "Holy Brian Christ!"

Both Sherlock and Molly looked up sharply, Sherlock's hips slowing but never stopping. Molly was practically boneless on the table, hands curled around Sherlock's biceps.

"John?" Sherlock asked, hips moving languidly. "Is there an emergency?"

John was slumped against the wall around the corner from Molly's kitchen, attempting to take a page from Sherlock's book and delete what he just saw from his hard drive; Sherlock and Molly on the woman's kitchen table, her practically wrapped around him, as he drove into her again and again.

"No," John's voice was a tiny squeak. "No emergency. Just- just looking for you."

"Oh, well," Sherlock's hands slid up the table, crinkling papers, to grasp the edges above Molly's head. "I'm going to be here for... a while. We're going for coffee after."

Molly lay under Sherlock, having shifted her hands to his sides, blushing furiously. This was, by far, the strangest sexual encounter she'd ever had. _This is Sherlock Holmes, _she told herself. _Did you really expect normal?_

"How, uh, how great for you," John said, voice still abnormally pitched. "I'll just, err, I'll just be off then." The doctor beat a quick retreat from the basement flat, and they could hear his feet pounding all the way up the stairs.

Sherlock turned his attention back to Molly, catching her lips in a quick kiss before resuming his earlier pace, slim hips moving with piston-like speed. Molly wrapped her arms around his chest, under where his arms were stretched above her, peppering his neck and collarbone with little kisses and nips as Sherlock rode out his completion above her. His entire body shuddered and jerked, face dropping to her hair, breathing heavily. He shifted to remove his weight from her, and the plate from her dinner fell to the floor, breaking into three pieces. Sherlock stood from the table and Molly looked at him lazily.

"You've broken my plate."

**..**

Half an hour later found Molly and Sherlock walking down Baker Street, a light mist at their backs. They walked side by side, not touching, Sherlock striding along confidently, tails of his coat billowing behind him. Molly was rushing along beside him, scrambling awkwardly to keep up. Abruptly, Sherlock stopped and ducked into a small coffee shop that Molly had never noticed before. It was dimly lit and the walls were bare brick, small round tables scattered across the place, a low counter set in one side, where Sherlock was already standing, squinting up at the menu board. By the time Molly reached him, he'd already ordered two coffees. Handing her one, he gestured to one of the tables and they sat.

Molly took a tentative sip of her coffee, fully expecting it to be black with two sugars, but was surprised when sweetness touched her tongue. It was made exactly how she liked it, with enough cream and sugar to make it sweet as ice cream.

"How did you know how I take my coffee?" she asked, looking across the table at Sherlock who just raised a brow at her, as if asking _Do I really have to explain? _"Right, never mind."

They sat in silence, only the sounds of the other patrons and the occasional sip to break it. It was awkward as could be, and Molly found she couldn't stop fidgeting in her seat. A glance out the window showed that the mist had turned to fat flakes of snow and Molly groaned audibly. Snow reminded her of Christmas, and Christmas meant a required trip home to see her mother and grandmother. That meant another round of interrogation as to why she wasn't married yet, and when will she have children? and other questions along that line.

"Problem?" Sherlock asked at her groan.

"It's nothing. Just remembered that Christmas is coming up. I can't stand Christmas."

"Neither can I. All of those... expectations." Sherlock visibly shuddered.

"Exactly! I'll have to make a trip to Cardiff and visit my Mum and Grand mum, and that's always just... horrible." Molly unbuttoned her coat and slipped out of it, twisting to hang it off the back of her chair.

"John wants to have this horrid Christmas party this year. With Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade and whatever insipid woman he's dating this month, Sarah, or whoever."

"Jasmine?" Molly offered.

"Yes, that's the one. I believe he's even invited Mycroft." Sherlock shook his head and wrapped his long fingers around the white Styrofoam of his cup and Molly felt an electric jolt shoot through her middle at the memory of what those fingers felt like. She shook her head to clear it, trying to stay on topic.

"I'd prefer spending Christmas in my morgue than visit my family. At least they don't grill be about grandchildren and crack the wine open at noon. They lay there all nice and quiet and let me cut them up, and..." Molly trailed off, realizing she'd begun to ramble. She hated it when she did that. Especially about her time in the morgue. For some reason, it tended to scare people off. But when she looked up from her cup, Sherlock was grinning at her crookedly.

"Believe me. I know _exactly _what you mean."

* * *

><p><em><strong>Author's Note: Here's the thing. I have a full length story that goes along with this about half finished, and I posted this kind of… test the waters of this fandom. If there's enough interest in this, I'll post the entire thing, once it's <strong>__**complete**__**. I'll finish it either way. Series two is disregarded in the full length story as well, mainly because I started this ages ago, and due to the fact that I love in the states with no internet at the moment, I haven't been able to watch the new episodes, much to my dismay. That'll be rectified soon, though, as I just ordered the DVDs. I swear I'm not sitting in front of my door, waiting for them to arrive. I swear. **_

_**Anyway, welcome a new comer and leave me some feedback, yeah?**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**(I own nothing related to **__**Sherlock**__**. No copyright infringement intended.)**_

_**Teeth in the Grass**_

_**Two**_

**..**

_Five months later…_

Molly was hunched over a file, eyes squinted, brow furrowed. _This can't be right..., _she thought to herself.

Mr. Christopher Morley had come in early that morning, the victim of a fatal car accident according to the officer that had accompanied him. The trauma was there; fractured skull, broken ribs, punctured and ruptured internal organs, burns covering fifty percent of his body from when the car had caught fire shortly after impact. She'd run a routine blood test, checking for drugs and alcohol, and found that there were traces of Flunitrazepam in his system, which was quite odd indeed. The drug was classified as a nitro-benzodiazepine, and was rarely prescribed, only in the most extreme cases of insomnia or other disorders of the like. It was more commonly known as Rohypnol, or the date rape drug.

Molly closed the file and exited the lab. Back into the morgue, she pulled Mr. Morley out of his drawer. Peeling the sheet back, she examined the body more closely. It was difficult, the body was an angry red, scorched black and sticky in places, but after close examination, she found what she was looking for. Barely visible, across the rib cage, was a long discoloration, inflicted by some sort of cylindrical object. Hard to tell with the extensive damage, but she'd bet that there were more like it.

She had plenty to put a call into Lestrade, for suspect of foul-play.

Back in the lab, she picked up the landline and put in a short call the detective before hanging up and punching in a second number. This had become routine sometime within the last two months, after she'd had one come through that had stumped her. Molly had called him in, and she'd been doing so since.

"John? Yeah, is Sherlock there? Could you put him on?"

There was some shuffling and grumbling before he came on the line. "This had better be good. I was in the middle of determining at what exact temperature human body fat comes to a boil," Sherlock said in an irritated voice.

"Oh God. The whole building's going to smell horrible."

"Molly? Oh, what've you got? Something interesting, I hope."

"Could be," she said. "You'll just have to come down and find out." Her voice was decidedly coy.

"Is this a play to get me to come down there? Not sure if it's a good idea, you know. Anderson couldn't look at me for a month after he walked in on us in your office. He fancies you."

Molly suppressed a shudder. "Disgusting, Sherlock. No, I've already put in a call to Lestrade, so you'd better hurry if you want to get here first. I've found Flunitrazepaaaam," she said in a sing-song voice. When she was just met with silence, she huffed. "A form of the date-rape drug, Sherlock. Honestly."

"Right then! I'm on my way." And he disconnected.

Molly shook her head and set the phone down, leaving Mr. Morley's file out before putting the rest away. Over the past five months, she and Sherlock had continued their relationship, in mostly physical areas. They'd grown closer over time, to be sure, but it wasn't the romantic relationship that Molly wanted. More like close friends who had a lot of sometimes very kinky sex. The time Anderson had walked into her office and found Sherlock bending Molly over her desk had been mild. She'd let Sherlock tie her up a few times, but it was something they did rarely, and then there was the time she'd ripped his clothes off in the morgue and they'd made use of one of the examination tables. But Sherlock remained as emotionally distant as always. Molly found herself relativity content at the moment, though. She had a healthy sex life (_for once_), a job that she loved and a... still horrible flat, but she was dealing.

Twenty minutes later, Sherlock strode through her lab doors in his usual style of tailored black suit with a light purple shirt under the jacket. His curly dark hair was longer than usual. She knew that under the suit he wasn't skin and bone as was expected, and that he actually had a marvelous arse. He was all lean, pale, coiled muscle. Series' of blue veins ran along the insides of his forearms; she'd developed a habit of tracing them with her fingertips in their more tender moments, which normally only came after sex.

"Show me," Sherlock said, coming to a stop at the edge of her lab table. Molly pushed off the stool she'd been sitting on, waiting for Sherlock, Lestrade or a new stiff. She led the way to the morgue and pulled open Morley's drawer and left Sherlock to it, directing Lestrade there when he showed up ten minutes later.

Molly finished her shift, unsurprised when Sherlock made no reappearance, and caught a taxi instead of walking like she normally did. After making a quick stop at Tesco, surely she could manage a simple pasta without burning her flat to the ground, she made her way home. Molly let herself into her flat and carted her bags into the kitchen. When she opened the fridge to put a carton of milk away, she screeched and immediately slammed it shut again. Unsure of what she'd seen, she cracked it open and peered inside. Sure enough, on the second shelf, was an evidence bag filled to bursting with dead snakes. They were all beady eyes and flashing fangs and Molly's stomach turned.

"That _unbelievable _man," Molly grumbled. Sherlock must have run out of room in his own fridge, either that or John had refused to let the serpents into their flat. Either way, they were now in hers, and she was going to give him a piece of her mind next time she saw him. Molly grabbed her broom from where she kept it leaning in a corner and used the handle to push the bag as far back as it would go, then shoved her milk in. That's as close as she would come to touching it. Sherlock would just have to get them out as soon as he got back, and that was that.

**..**

True to form, Sherlock didn't show up for three days. After making him fetch the bag of snakes from the back of her fridge, they settled on Molly's sofa. She suspected he moved them to Mrs. Hudson's; served her right for making Molly give up her precious Toby. The trash TV that Sherlock found so interesting was coming on, and soon enough he'd be shouting at the television and gesticulating over the stupidity of the human race.

This time it was Molly who grew bored. She hated these types of shows, and didn't know why Sherlock couldn't watch them at _his _place before coming over. Feet tucked up under her, she sat with her body angled toward his as he leaned forward, fixed on the show he was watching. A trashy mother was yelling at her equally trashy looking daughter for sleeping around, while the daughter yelled back about the same thing and Molly was seriously worried about losing IQ points. In fear that her brain may begin leaking out through her ears, Molly decided to amuse herself. Plucking the remote from Sherlock's hand, she turned the television off, ignoring his shout of protest. Molly quickly maneuvered herself on the floor between his legs and the coffee table, and silenced him with a light shove to his chest, pushing him back on the couch.

Nimble fingers made quick work of barriers, hands wrapped around flesh, lips parted and Molly took him in. Sherlock hummed in familiar pleasure, closing his eyes, leaning back into the cushions of the sofa. Molly slid a free hand up his torso, bunching the white cotton of his button up, clenching it with slightly shaking fingers. After months of exploring hard planes, deducing desires and studying the science of particular groans, Molly knew exactly which buttons to press to make this aloof man quiver and unravel under her touch.

Unravel he did; minutes later he was pulsing and Molly instinctively swallowed in surprise. She sat back, cool wood of the coffee table pressing into her back, and looked up at him. He met her stare passively. Molly's eyebrows climbed her forehead as she sent him a pointed look.

"What? It was a tense week."

Molly couldn't hold back her giggle as she wiped her lips with the back of her hand.

**..**

A few hours later had them lying in Molly's bed, her head resting on Sherlock's chest, his arm around her shoulders. His fingers weaved through her hair, and hers traced his arms.

"What do you think about cats?" Molly suddenly asked, drawing an odd look from her bed mate.

"I don't," Sherlock answered.

"I was thinking of trying to talk Mrs. Hudson into letting me get a kitten."

"What happened to that... other one you had?"

"Toby? When I moved here, I gave him to my sister. Apparently, there was an incident with her girls and an entire bottle of dish soap, and... well... things didn't end well for Toby."

"How long had you had Toby?"

"Oh, several years."

Sherlock shifted away from her slightly. "It's safe to say, then, that Moriarty knew Toby, yes?"

_What? _"Where did that come from? Yes, I guess you could say that."

"Well, how very lovely for you then," Sherlock positively snapped, then sat up in bed.

"Sherlock, what're you-"

"I'm sure Moriarty was very friendly with your _pussy."_

Molly gasped. "Sherlock!"She sat up as he reached for his clothes, and she watched as he began to pull them on.

"Must have been one big happy family," he sneered. "You, Moriarty and your _pussy._" He began buttoning his shirt.

"What in the hell has gotten into you?" Molly asked, drawing the sheet over her chest.

"Me? Absolutely nothing has _gotten into me. _You, on the other hand, maybe I should contact _Moriarty _for that information."

"I think you should leave now, Sherlock."

"What does it look like I'm doing?" And then he was gone. Molly heard her front door slam shut, his feet pounding up the stairs, then his own door slamming. Swallowing around the lump in her throat, Molly twisted and pulled the covers back, slipping under them, still naked. She refused to let herself cry, not over this.

Molly had nearly coaxed her body into sleep, when she heard her front door creak open slowly, which Sherlock had failed to lock after he'd left earlier. Figuring that it was him, that he'd left something in her flat, she didn't move from her bed. Soft footsteps moved across rooms, and her heart began beating faster as they neared her bedroom. Her back was to the door and she didn't turn to look as it was pushed open. Then, she remembered the reason she was living in this shitty flat in the first place, and cursed herself for merely assuming her visitor was Sherlock. By that time, it was too late. A strong hand had clamped around her arm, pushing her down against the bed, preventing movement, and Molly felt a sharp jab and a sting in her bicep.

Then Molly drifted away into a hazy, drug addled world of unconsciousness.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: Continuation of Teeth in the Grass- hope it doesn't disappoint! <strong>

**Completely blown away by the amount of love the original one shot received. Thanks to Leanne07, Agatha, usedkarma, Murmeltierchen (you flatter me darling, but I'm quite sure that I would swoon and fall down dead if Gatiss or Moffat ever read this), Hannablah, gidget89, secretsunion, Miggs, JaspersMum, Nocturnias, exstordinarily invisible, Lady Krystalyn, ClanaFan01, xtaintedlove, Jedifish, katdemon18, FangFan, Terri16, TheHopelessRomantic24, Amanda, eccentricpetal (kindly burn my heart out a bit more and update, you), Peppermione, StrangeLittleSwirl, jesslovessmiles, Toshiromomo4ever, booda77, benedict-youcuminhersnatch (I'd like to say, I woke up to this review. Saw the name and nearly **_**died**_**), Dianne, AnnaGandalf, Kimmy B (meat. heh.), luvmesomejasper (love you too, my friend! You know far too much. I may have to kill you. Haven't decided yet. But be wary- I know where you live.), kewellchick, MissLAnon, musangel88, grace (what does your exclamation point **_**mean? **_**It's been driving me crazy, the **_**not knowing**_**.), barus, Rosie the riveter, ViennaSunset, MissKingAtYourService, Amy, R (sexual shenanigans.), puckbunny19, TBBTlover123, maharet97, FallonHolmes (your review made me all kinds of giddy. As an episode… shaddup!), Vitawash, MrsBadcrumble18, KittyElf, Redconky (they wouldn't **_**dare **_**show this on TV. Not mainstream TV, at any rate!), Hellscrimsonangel and fuzzysoxftw for all of the review orgasms. **

**luvmesomejasper was an essential component in the writing of this chapter. She's an enabler.**

**Self-edited, and I realize that I am a comma whore (admitting there is a problem is the first step toward solving it.). If anyone would like to take a crack at editing, let me know.**

**Rather nervous about this whole thing, so let me know what you thought.**


	3. Chapter 3

_**(Disclaimer: I own nothing related to **__**Sherlock**__**. No copyright infringement intended.)**_

_**Teeth in the Grass**_

_**Three**_

**..**

It was late afternoon the next day when John thought that something may have happened between Sherlock and Molly. His detective friend was currently lying prostrate on their sofa, staring at the ceiling and sighing dramatically every few minutes. John was sitting across the room in his chair, trying to read the paper, but was becoming increasingly distracted. Giving up, he folded his reading material and set it aside.

"What is it, then?" John asked.

Sherlock's head flopped in his direction. "What's what?" Another sigh.

"What's the matter?"

"Why on earth would anything be the matter?"

It was John's turn to sigh. "Have you and Molly had a row?" John had seen neither hide nor hair of the girl since the day before, which was odd, as she usually at least popped in on her way to the hospital.

Sherlock wiggled his toes against the arm of the couch, and hummed reluctantly before answering. "I suppose you could say that."

"What did you do?"

John refused to let himself wither under the glare Sherlock sent his way. "Why are you so sure it was me?"

"Was it you?"

A hesitant "yes," from the sofa.

"Then I'll ask again. What did you do?"

Sherlock flopped until he was in an upright position, blue silk robe falling low on his shoulders. "We had a… disagreement. I may have gotten a little, ahem, nasty. At which point she asked me to leave, and I did."

"Damn it, Sherlock." John scrubbed a weary hand down his face. "You need to go apologize."

Slumping back against the couch, Sherlock returned a stubborn, "No."

"And why not?"

"Because apologizing would indicate that Molly and I are in some kind of relationship, which we are not."

"You're unbelievable." John stood from his chair. "No, you're an arse." And with that, he stomped to the door.

"Where are you going?" Sherlock called.

"To talk to the poor girl!" John yelled back.

"She's at work."

John was halfway down the stairs, so he raised his voice even more. "Did you hear her leave?"

He continued plodding down the stairs, only slowing his pace when he found Molly's door standing wide open. His gut instinct, honed from years of military service, was telling him that something wasn't quite right. Slowly, he crept into the flat, looking around. John found nothing amiss, until he came to the bedroom. The bed was empty and rumpled; the lamp that normally stood on the side table knocked to the floor and broken into large pieces. John stood there, looking around the room, trying to come up with a rational scenario. Maybe she'd just been running late this morning, knocked over the lamp, and hadn't had time to clean it.

He knew that wasn't right, though. He'd been up for hours, and Molly always made such great noise when she left; clamoring up the stairs, and slamming the front door. If she'd been in a hurry, she would have been even louder. No, he'd been right at the first. Something had happened.

Racing out of the flat, John yelled up the stairs. "Sherlock! Get down here! Now!"

"Why?" came the response floating down.

"Dammit, man! Get down here!"

John ducked back into the apartment when he heard Sherlock's slippered feet on the stairs. A few seconds later, Sherlock came striding in, back straight, looking stubborn as a mule.

"What is it?" he asked haughtily, and John wanted to punch him in the face.

"Something's happened." John led the way into the bedroom, and pointed the lamp out to Sherlock.

An intense frown marred the detective's features as he swept toward the bed, raking his eyes over the rumpled bed clothing.

Focus now fixed on one point, he spoke over his shoulder. "Call Lestrade."

"Have you found something?"

"Yes." Sherlock reached down and grabbed the fitted sheet, pulling it off the bed. "Blood." There were a few droplets of crimson staining the white sheet.

"Oh hell," John mumbled, pulling his mobile from his jeans pocket and hit number four on his speed dial.

**..**

There was a cool draft, and the steady _plink, plink, plink _of slowly dripping water echoed through the room. Molly came around slowly. Her muscles screamed in protest when she attempted to shift, and she found that her hands were bound tightly behind her back and her feet were tied at the ankles. She tried to remain calm, until she shifted a bit more, and realized that she was naked. Molly's eyes snapped open, and panic threatened to overwhelm her.

The room was dark, pitch black on all sides. The squeak under her told her that she was lying on some type of bed. Another gust of cool wind washed over her, and she shivered violently. Molly took mental stock.

She was tied up naked on a bed in a dark room against her will.

Then and there, Molly decided to blame Sherlock.

Her mouth was dry, tongue sticking to the roof, and Molly wondered how long she'd been unconscious. The last dregs of whatever drug they'd injected into her system were beginning to fade, and her heart pounded harder in her chest.

Fear pumped through her system, but her initial panic was fading. Molly lay there, picking at the ropes that bound her with rounded fingernails, and then she realized that she was waiting. Waiting for Sherlock and for John and for Lestrade. Surely they were looking for her.

There was movement in the room, and Molly's eyes snapped open wide. Footsteps echoing off concrete coming closer. Then a small _clink _and a _shink! _of something being pulled and a bare bulb directly overhead flared to life. Molly blinked at the sudden light, willing the floating spots to go away. Blinking rapidly for a few moments, her eyes adjusted, and she was able to focus on the man standing next to her.

Jim Moriarty stared down at her, a small smile twisting his lips.

"There she is, finally," he said, voice colored with the Irish lilt she had, at one point, found charming. "How are you, Molly dear?"

Molly glared up at him, and then she noticed the shadow looming behind him.

"Oh! Dear me. I've forgotten my manners. Allow me to introduce my... acquaintance, Mr. Rule." Jim gestured with his hand to the man standing behind him. The man took a step forward, and Molly attempted to swallow around her dry tongue at the face that was thrown into relief.

A cratered face under a fringe of bright red hair, with a bulbous nose and thin rubbery lips. His eyes were the most startling thing about his face; one bright blue and the other milky white, its lid heavily scarred and drooping. He leered at her, showing yellow stained teeth.

"Back to my earlier question. How are you, dear heart? Comfy enough?" Jim's words tore her attention away from the startling man, and she opened her mouth to speak, a scathing response rattling around in her head. Molly found she could do little more than squeak through dry lips. A side effect of the drug they'd given her, as surely she hadn't been out _that _long.

"Oh, how silly of me. Of course." Moriarty snapped his fingers in Mr. Rule's direction and the man disappeared and returned quickly, a dark green canteen clutched in his hands. Jim moved to the side, and Mr. Rule swooped upon the bed. Molly jerked her head as far back as she could, not wanting to ingest anything they'd give her for fear of more drugs, but Rule caught her chin in a rough hand and forced her mouth open with just the right pressure on her jaw.

Cool water flooded into her mouth and down her chin. Molly coughed and spluttered, but some of the liquid worked its way down her throat. Rule removed himself from the bed and Molly coughed hard, tremors racking her body, her front now soaked with water.

"Tut, tut. Such behavior," Jim scolded.

This time Molly was able to answer. "Fuck you, Jim," she spat.

The man smirked, eyes raking down her form. "What's that saying? Been there, done that. Found it rather lacking, to be honest."

Molly's glare turned absolutely venomous. Jim clasped his hands together, rocked back on his heels, smiled.

"You may want to mind your manners, dear. Mr. Rule here has a few... special interests, and he's the one who'll be looking after you in the time to come. One word from me, and he'll have free reign to do as he pleases with you, my pretty little doctor."

A glance at Rule, who was looking at her with a wistful expression on his face, made a shiver run over Molly's body. Her nakedness was a horrible fact that was slapping. She could feel his stare, running along her bare skin like creeping fingers.

"What do you want?" She hated the weakness in her voice.

"From you? Nothing. From your lover- and _nice_ going there- well, that's another matter entirely."

Molly blinked up at him. She knew this was all Sherlock's fault.

"Now, Mr. Rule will behave himself, unless I give him permission to be naughty, so you have nothing to worry about. For the time being. Oh!" he said enthusiastically, "I can't wait to see how it all plays out!" With that, he turned on his heel, and disappeared from sight, leaving her alone with Rule. The man gave her another appreciative glance, and then turned back to the darkness that still enveloped most of the room. Something scraped against the cement floor, and Rule returned dragging a chair behind him. He situated himself just within the circle of light, folded his hands across his bulging middle, and smiled at her, spittle gathered in the corners of his mouth.

Molly shuddered again and turned her face away, refusing to let herself cry.

**..**

"Called Bart's," John said, walking back into Molly's flat and over to where Sherlock was sitting on the woman's sofa, fingers steepled under his chin.

"Let me guess, Molly didn't show up."

"Nope, and they've had no word."

There was movement in the bedroom, and Sherlock glared at Anderson as he and his team came trooping out. Lestrade was just a few steps behind them.

"My team found a number of substances on Miss Hooper's sheets, along with the blood that the freak found," Anderson was saying to Lestrade. "We'll take them back to the lab and analyze them, but I can tell from looking that there is a significant amount of seminal fluid. If I can only get a DNA match with someone in our system, then maybe we can find..."

"Anderson, do yourself a favor and shut up," Sherlock snapped from where he was sitting on the sofa. "You know very well who it belongs to. Remember Bart's? And your horrible habit of _not knocking_?" Sherlock stressed the last few words, and Anderson flushed red before shuffling out the door. "And it's _Doctor_ Hooper!" Sherlock yelled after him before getting up to slam the door.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: Anderson's not allowed to talk about Sherlock's seminal fluid, and that's that. <strong>

**Thanks to SEEKER-2000, Mostlymakebelieve, lori (your review was so flattering, I forwarded it to a friend of mine. Mostly to share in the love, a little to flaunt.), booda77, MrsBadcrumble18, FallonHolmes, JediFish, Snarkiness, eccentricpetal, ktmt1120, Kimmy B, conchepcion, Team Tennant, puckbunny19, , TBBTLover123 and katdemon18 for reviewing chapter two!**

**Sherlock is freaking hard. To write, I mean. He's hard to write. And I'm so grateful that so many of you seem to think that I'm getting him right. Hopefully I don't screw him up as the story continues. **

**Also, I'd like to mention, that subsequent continuing chapters will be shorter than the original one shot was. I actually thought about splitting the one shot up into two chapters, but decided to leave it. Regular chapters will be 2-4k long.**

**Love?**


	4. Chapter 4

_**(I own nothing related to **__**Sherlock**__**. No copyright infringement intended. I do, however, own the dastardly Mr. Rule. I feel the need to put a warning in: here be violence and some slightly disturbing themes.)**_

_**Teeth in the Grass**_

_**Four**_

**..**

The spring day was pleasant and warm. For once it wasn't raining, and the sun shone brightly, a few puffy clouds the only things marring the bright blue sky. Birds twittered, and there were cheerful voices down below, drifting up to the open window of 221 B. Baker Street.

It'd been a week since Molly was taken, and John had never seen Sherlock like this. In all the cases they'd worked together, Sherlock's intensity had never been quite this frightening. Only eating when he was forced to, John didn't think he'd slept once since they'd gone into Molly's flat and found the blood and the broken lamp.

All that they'd been able to discover was that someone had broken into Molly's flat that night, restrained her, injected her with some type of drug and then vanished, leaving no other traces. The kidnapper had been clever. So clever, in fact, that they already knew who was behind it.

No one had seen Moriarty since the confrontation at the pool. He'd made no contact and there was nothing to do but wait. Sherlock spent almost every hour in Molly's flat; inspecting things again and again, sure that he'd missed something. When he wasn't there, he was pouring over her lab and the morgue at Bart's, or staring at the pink mobile that he'd for some reason never handed over to Lestrade. He barely spoke. He wasn't even playing his violin, the instrument going untouched.

John would be more concerned for his friend if he hadn't been so worried over Molly himself. Who knew what was being done to her, if she was even still alive. There was a very good chance that she'd been killed immediately, but John doubted it. Moriarty enjoyed the game too much; enjoyed the _dance. _It was just a matter of waiting, and it was driving them all mad.

Going into the kitchen, John made two cups of tea and then proceeded to carry them both down the flights of stairs that separated him from the basement flat. When he entered, he found Sherlock sitting on Molly's sofa, legs stretched out in front of him, staring at the pink mobile phone that was laying on the dark brown arm rest next to him. John sighed at the sight. Just how close had the detective and the pathologist gotten over the past several months? John knew they'd been shagging, but didn't think the relationship had gotten any deeper. Maybe he was wrong, who knew? Sherlock certainly wasn't saying.

When the mug that John held out was ignored he sat it on the coffee table in front of the sofa, and took a seat next to his friend, sipping at his own steaming drink. Sherlock was perfectly still beside him, sharp eyes fixed on the gaudy smart phone, and John just wished that _something _would happen.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, the mobile vibrated and sounded off that a text message had been received. John heard Sherlock suck in a breath beside him, and hesitate briefly before snatching the mobile up, unlocking the screen with quick fingers. John leaned closer to read the message.

_Are you ready? _The text read.

With slightly shaking fingers, Sherlock replied. _Ready for what?_

A moment later another ping echoed through the still room. _We had so much fun the last time, my dear, that I've decided I want to play some more. Are you ready for my treasure hunt?_

John's breath seemed caught in his chest_. _Automatically he dug in his pocket for his own mobile and punched in a call to Lestrade. Sherlock had yet to reply, but did so now.

_Yes, I'm ready. _Another small hesitation. _My prize? _

Sherlock was still as death, mobile clutched in white-tight fingers, waiting. When the phone dinged with an incoming photograph, John didn't want to look, but forced himself. He did, and was almost sick.

The photograph was clearly of Molly. She was bound at the wrists and ankles, arms pulled sharply behind her body. She was lying on a dirty striped mattress. She was naked.

Anger, white-hot and electrifying ran through John. _At least she's still alive, _he forced himself to think. Next to him, Sherlock hadn't moved an inch, didn't seem to be even breathing, staring at the image on the mobile's screen.

"Sherlock, you have to reply," John said lowly.

Swallowing thickly, Sherlock typed out, _First clue?_

_1215 Blair St. Cardiff. I've left something for you, a gift. And Sherlock, do be careful. Muck this up, and our sweet Molly will be the one who's sorry. You have three hours. Better get a move on._

**..**

Molly floated.

Between waking and sleeping, never wanting either for too long. Awake meant she had to face the horrible man constantly at her bedside, leering at her, eyes raking her body. Sleep meant nightmares that no one would ever find her. That Jim would grow bored with this and give her to Rule.

She was force-fed some type of disgusting-thick liquid once a day and allowed up every six or seven hours to use the humiliating bucket that served as her toilet. The cold was constant, and Molly knew that sooner or later, she would grow sick.

Jim hadn't returned, but true to word, Rule had kept his hands to himself.

At the moment, Molly was awake, staring up at the bare bulb dangling above her. Her eyes watered and strained, and a migraine was setting in, but she wouldn't look away. Rule's chair scraped back and she heard his footsteps retreat away from the bed, then the unmistakable sound of him relieving himself in a far corner of the dark room. Molly had never felt so hopeless, or helpless. Blinking, she finally looked away from the bulb, bright spots dancing behind her closed eyes. Movement beside her. Rule was back in his chair. She glanced in his direction. He was looking at her again; thumb stroking over his bottom lip, grinning that odd little smile.

Molly went away again.

**..**

The trip to Cardiff took just over two and a half hours. John had been previously unaware that Sherlock even _knew _how to drive, yet there he was, hunched over the wheel of Lestrade's car, the detective inspector himself riding in the backseat. He still hadn't said a word, and John watched his friend warily from the front seat.

As it turned out, the pale yellow town house of 1215 Blair Street belonged to Molly's mother. The doctor had grown up there, with her father, mother and grandmother. Only the mother and grandmother resided there now, Molly's father having died when she was a teenager. John was just a step behind Sherlock as he strode up the front walk to the door, and burst in without knocking. Mrs. Hooper and her mother came rushing into the entry way from opposite directions of the house, but Sherlock brushed passed them and up the stairs directly behind.

Elizabeth Hooper was in her fifties, with graying ash blonde hair and wide blue eyes. Heavy lines ebbed from the corners of her mouth, seeming to constantly pull it down into a frown. Today she was dressed in a light pink skirt and ivory blouse; her fingers smoothed the material of her skirt as John and Lestrade explained the situation to her, and her frown grew even deeper.

She had, of course, been aware that her daughter was missing, and had cooperated fully with the investigation, but this new development seemed more than the woman could take.

"So, what you're saying is that _that _man," she jerked her head toward the staircase, in the direction Sherlock had disappeared, "is the reason my daughter was kidnapped?"

Mrs. Saul, Molly's grandmother, stood ramrod straight behind her daughter, hands clasped in front of her, glaring at John for the answer to this question. A question he didn't know how to answer. He left the women with Lestrade and made his way up the carpeted stairs to the second floor. John found Sherlock in the second bedroom he came across, a bedroom that had unmistakably been Molly's in her youth. A double bed took up the middle of the room, pink-and-cream comforter stretched over it, pillows in the same color scheme piled high at the head. A white six drawer dresser, vanity table and desk lined the walls, which were painted a light pink. In fact, the entire room seemed very pink, and John wondered if this wasn't the reason Molly was so adverse to the color now. This didn't look like a room Molly had put together herself, more like something her mother had designed.

There were personal touches here and there, photographs of a younger Molly and friends stuck in the edges of the vanity mirror, a few posters on the walls of bands that had reached their brief peaks several years ago.

Sherlock stood in the middle of the room, beside the bed, sharp eyes sweeping over everything.

"What are we looking for here, Sherlock?" John asked, going to stand beside him.

"I have no idea, John. Something out of place, something that doesn't belong here." It was the first time John had heard his friend's voice in several days. "Get Mrs. Hooper up here. Now." John didn't argue with the commanding tone, just did as he was asked.

The woman came into the room, arms wrapped around her middle, anger apparent on her face. Sherlock swooped in on her, their noses nearly touching.

"Mrs. Hooper, you must think now. Is there _anything _in this room that's not where it should be? Anything at all?"

The older woman sent him a pointed glare, but she knew, from Lestrade's explanation, just what was on the line here. She went over the room, and declared that everything was where it should be. John glanced at his watch; there were only twenty minutes remaining. Sherlock was ripping pillows from the bed, running his fingers under the crease in the sheets, overturning the mattress.

"What can I do?" John asked. "We're running out of time."

"I know that, John. Go search a different room, Lestrade you take another. Just stay out of my way." Sherlock was now rifling through the drawer of the vanity table, thumbing through what looked like old notes with a frantic speed. Finding nothing, he dropped the stack to the floor. John and Lestrade rushed from the room, one going to the sitting room, the other to the kitchen.

Sherlock moved on to the small desk, wrenching drawers open, pulling out old text and note books that looked like they were from Molly's high school days.

He was afraid.

This was utterly disconcerting, because Sherlock Holmes did not feel fear. Not once had he felt his heart race in his chest like this, or feel this cold, clammy sweat on his palms as he leafed through notebooks, recognizing old calculus notes. His head throbbed as he muttered to himself, trying to force the gears of his mind to slip back into place. Sherlock could feel his train of thought sloughing through seemingly endless bogs of muck; this rush of fear, this swelling of… of _sentiment _slicing through his normally pitch-perfect thought patterns. He scattered papers on the floor as he went, pulse racing and fingers twitching, mindless of any mess he was making.

A sharp glare at a clock on the wall told him that he had five minutes. Sickness churned in his stomach as he dropped to his knees and raised the bed skirt, but found absolutely nothing underneath but dust bunnies and a long forgotten striped sock. He stepped over papers and pillows and blankets on the floor to inspect the photographs tucked into the mirror, but found nothing amiss there, either. That left the dresser.

Sherlock started with the bottom drawers; unfolded, shook out jeans, jumpers and sweaters that a younger Molly had worn.

Sherlock felt his heart drop and bile rise in his throat as the mobile in his pocket chirped. He was out of time. On his knees, he slumped back, resting on his heels. With shaking hands, he removed the pink phone from his left jacket pocket.

_I'm disappointed. _Was all the text read.

The phone began ringing. Sherlock answered slowly, and the soft sobs that came through the connection made Mrs. Hooper, who'd been hovering in the door way, slide sideways ungracefully until she was clutching the wooden frame.

They could hear Molly begging.

And then the screaming started.

**..**

The next hour of Molly Hooper's life was the longest she'd ever experienced.

She was completely lucid, unable to force her mind away, as Rule was given the okay to play.

He started with the knife, and moved on to other things after.

Molly wasn't sure how she could feel such pain and not die of it.

After the first five minutes, she would have gladly died.

**..**

John and Lestrade had to physically move Sherlock from Molly's mother's home.

The pale detective refused to hang up, refused to break the connection, and so Molly's screams and cries of pain and pleas for death echoed through Lestrade's car on the long drive back to London. It lasted an hour, at the end of which Moriarty's voice came down the line.

"Do try harder next time." The call was ended, and Sherlock hadn't moved a muscle.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: So, some of you have guessed that this story is probably not going to be happy for a while. And you'd be completely correct. I'm hoping that I've properly balanced angst with action and suspense in the upcoming chapters, but hey, I'll let you-all be the judge of that. Going to try and keep with a WednesdaySaturday update schedule. **

**Also, despite my best efforts between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, I am not British. Nor have I ever visited England, or ever been out of the U.S. I can actually count on my fingers and toes all the times I've been out of Indiana. So I've got to make do with information found on the internet and the occasional harassment of twitter friends for little bits. Forgive me if I get anything wrong in that respect. **

**Thanks to conchepcion, Murmeltierchen (darling, if I **_**had**_** kidnapped Benedict, the very **_**last **_**thing I'd be making him do would be performing his role over and over. le swoon.), Mostlymakebelieve, Snarkiness, mhoopers (John does have a heart of gold, s'why we love him, yeah?), lori, living-in-my-own-AU, eccentricpetal, Vitawash, Dizzybunny, Nocturnias, Snarkland78, Hellscrimsonangel, fionajane, puckbunny19, xxL2xx, EMSmith (Shaddup! Jim Moriarty of fan fiction? You kind of just made my year.), PurpleYin (thanks for the feedback on chapters two and three, and I love that you spoke up about what you didn't like- everyone's entitled to their opinion. I hope you stick with me.) and katdemon18 for the review-gasms! **

**Love?**


	5. Chapter 5

_**(I own nothing related to Sherlock, no copyright infringement intended. I do, however, own the disgusting Mr. Rule. I feel the need to put a warning in: here be violence and some slightly disturbing themes.)**_

_**Teeth in the Grass**_

_**Five**_

**..**

The next day, a package was delivered to 221B. It was addressed to Sherlock Holmes, care of John Watson.

It was a padded manila brown envelope, rather standard and un-extraordinary as far as menacing packages went. No return address, naturally. John carted it downstairs to 221C where Sherlock was curled up on Molly's couch, knees pulled to his chest, pink mobile clutched limply in his hand. John knew this was killing him. Someone the detective cared about was being hurt, tortured, held captive, and Sherlock could do nothing. Nothing but wait for another message. John didn't even think it was about being outsmarted, which normally would have had his friend in a frustrated tizzy.

It was the fact that it was Molly, whom Sherlock had, somehow, allowed under his skin. John, perhaps arrogantly, knew that if the same situation was applied to John himself, Sherlock would behave just this way. John sat on the coffee table, across from Sherlock. The detective's eyes didn't waver, and it looked as though he were living somewhere in his head, at the moment.

"Sherlock?" John said, touching his friend's shoulder gently.

With a start, Sherlock looked up at him.

"Are you alright?" John asked.

"A stupid question, even for you."

John said nothing in return, because he knew Sherlock was right. He held the package in Sherlock's line of sight. "This came for you just now."

"Burn it." Sherlock closed his eyes and rolled onto his back, stretching his legs out.

"It has a faint air of menace about it. I think you should take a look."

Sherlock's eyes snapped open. "Return address?"

"None."

"Is it ticking?"

"No."

The pale man sat up and held out his hand for the package. John gave it over.

Turning it with nimble fingers, Sherlock inspected every inch of the envelope. "No postmark," he mumbled, running his fingers over the manila. John watched as Sherlock poked, prodded, scratched with his thumbnail and even sniffed the package. "Other than the lack of postmark, nothing discernible. I don't recognize the handwriting, though it's obvious it was addressed by a man."

Sherlock peeled the flap back, peered inside, and then froze.

John's mind came up with a thousand different horrible possibilities. He nearly sighed in relief when all Sherlock pulled out was a pair of purple knickers, and he wondered why Sherlock was so unsettled.

Sherlock curled his fingers around the silky material, remembering him and Molly's first night here in this apartment, when she'd been so intoxicated and telling. He upended the envelope, letting a sheet of white, unlined paper fall out. Sherlock laid the envelope on the table and snatched the paper off the floor. His heart beat faster in his chest, because he knew, _knew, _that this was another clue that would lead him to Molly. The next step in Moriarty's _treasure hunt._

_My dear friend,_

_I was oh, so disappointed that you failed in finding your first clue. And it was so simple! Perhaps the girl is muddling your brain? Filling your mind with pesky hormones and feelings. If that's the case, I should do the world a favor and just end her. She would certainly thank me, at this point. Oh! Her screams were something to hear, but then you did, didn't you? In any case, that would make it too easy. I'm not quite ready for this round to be over, just yet._

_I've left you another clue (and sent you the last. Really, I'm surprised at you. Surely you remember _that _night with our dear doctor). Do you remember our defective friend? You'll find your next step where she met her explosive end. Tick tock goes the clock, and you have five hours to find your next clue. _

_This is the last time I'll help you. From now on, it's up to you. And do try to remember what's on the line this time? Molly was almost as disappointed with you as I was._

_Her blood was such a delicious shade of red._

_Ta!_

_Moriarty_

Sherlock's mind repeated the last two sentences over and over. _Disappointed_._.. delicious red. _He shook his head and went back to the letter; there would be time for that later, after he'd gotten Molly back. _Defective friend. _The old woman, obviously. He was already on his feet.

Sherlock handed John the letter, but kept the knickers, slipping them in the pocket of his trousers.

"Take this upstairs. Go and get Lestrade, and meet me at the old woman's apartment. Do you remember it?"

"I do," John answered.

"Good. Meet me there."

Sherlock swept from the flat, mindless of the fact that he hadn't changed his clothes for three days, nor had he showered. Or shaved. The light sprinkling of ginger facial hair looked completely out of place against the detective's skin.

But he didn't notice, and probably wouldn't have cared if he had. Sherlock rushed out of 221 and hailed a cab, bumping into an old woman, knocking her shopping out of her arms.

When John came down a few minutes after, the woman was still picking her packages up. After helping her, he grabbed a cab of his own and took it to the Yard.

**..**

When Molly regained consciousness the first thing she realized was that she couldn't see out of her right eye. As disconcerting as that was, the throbbing pain in her orbital socket paled in comparison to the rest of her body. The second realization was of a strange extra heaviness blanketing her upper body, and it took Molly a few moments to recognize that they'd dressed her in a thin t-shirt. The coverage was almost a relief, but the fabric, even though it was soft cotton, grated against her raw wounds. And the third thing was that her hands were now bound in front of her, and her feet weren't bound at all.

Breath caught in her chest as she flexed her toes and drew her knees up a little, ignoring the protest from her damaged body. Molly looked toward Rule's chair.

He'd been most gleeful while torturing her, Jim standing in the background, watching passively. He'd torn at her body until the only sounds in the room had been her screams and the heavy wet smack of his fist against her flesh. Molly remembered begging them to just finish it at one point, begging for her own death. The memory angered her, and Molly felt what she scientifically knew was delirious adrenaline coursing through her, but in that moment she purposefully mistook it for courage.

Staring at Rule in his chair, Molly finally processed that he was asleep. His head lolled, a small smile on his lips, looking for the entire world like a contented child.

There wouldn't be another opportunity like this.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Molly edged toward the side of the bed, away from Rule. Her entire being was protesting, firing nerve endings begging her to crawl back in that bed and give them a reprieve. Molly gritted her teeth and continued her movements until her feet swung out into open air. She wiggled her butt to the edge of the mattress and her toes touched cold concrete. She continued to slide until she was crouched on the floor next to the bed on the metal frame, the freezing cold stone under her nearly refreshing against her burning wounds.

Molly looked over her shoulder, passed the mattress she'd been bound to for the past week, doing her best to not blanch at the wicked dark stains where her blood had pooled. A few spots were still wet, reflections of light shimmering in their surfaces. Rule hadn't moved.

Using the bedframe, Molly levered herself up, rusted metal digging into the palms of her hands. With the first step, she nearly tumbled back into an ungainly pile on the floor but managed to keep herself up. Ten small steps and Molly was in the shadow, beyond the illumination of the room's single light. A few more and she passed a battered folding table that held Rule's implements, a few of them still dirty with blood and bits of her flesh.

Molly swallowed around the bile that rose in her throat at the site and reached out toward the wall, using it to hold herself upright as she continued her shuffling steps. Green painted plaster crumbled and dusted over her, but she kept on, eyes now fixed on the door frame that she could make out. Only about twenty steps away. She glanced back. Rule hadn't moved a muscle.

Ten steps away now, she was so close. Long, matted brown hair fell over her shoulders and into her face and Molly let it hang. It was taking everything she had just to walk. Five more steps. _If I could only get outside this room. Just get outside… _

Shaking fingers closed around the cold metal knob of the industrial door. Molly held her breath, and released it with a small, shaking sob when the knob turned easily in her hand and the door cracked open.

_Just get outside…_

**..**

The site of the bomb blast that had taken place the year previous had not been rebuilt. The building had been too old, under insured, and so the land owners had moved the surviving tenants to other premises. The moldering ruins were scheduled for demolition in just a week. Brick crumbled around a gaping black hole, exposing destroyed apartments.

Sherlock stood with his hands clasped behind his back on the sidewalk in front of this building. Whatever he was looking for, he was sure was not inside the actual building. Tall grass, brown and dead, boxed in by a rusting chain-link fence, swayed in the warm breeze that ruffled Sherlock's unkempt hair. He was still as a corpse, sharp eyes slotted, raking over everything.

A car screeched to a halt behind him, and Sherlock quickly identified the voices and gaits of John and Lestrade before discarding them.

Lestrade was slightly winded; his voice coming from Sherlock's left. "Sherlock, wha-"

"Shut up."

The DI scowled but complied. John hung back, arms crossed over his chest, waiting. He and Lestrade had dealt with this enough times before that they knew to wait until Sherlock leapt into action, and they would follow suit.

Sherlock scanned the perimeter. The building was nothing more than a ruin, unstable, too damaged to hold the slightest of weights. He knew whatever he was looking for wasn't inside; while Moriarty likely couldn't care less about the fate of the lackey sent to plant the clue, Sherlock knew that the man didn't want him dead. Not yet, it wasn't the right time. Moriarty needed to play his game; Sherlock felt the need was nearly ritualistic for the consulting criminal. That left the grounds.

Bent grass, broken weeds, ruffled by more than the weather. Anything, any small discrepancy.

There, in the north-east corner of the yard nearly directly against the chain link was a disturbed ring of grass that was barely visible from his vantage point.

Without a seconds hesitation Sherlock vaulted the fence, flakes of rust grating against his palms, and began wading through nearly waist high grass. Behind him, John and Lestrade scrambled into action, taking time to open the creaking gate before following Sherlock. Kicking through grass and tangled weeds took time, and it was nearly a full minute before Sherlock approached the small clearing.

In a perfect circle, maybe a foot in circumference, the dry earth was exposed; foliage ripped away leaving the dirt disturbed. Sherlock stopped just outside the circle, looking down into it, frozen for a split second when something heavy and unfamiliar lurched in his chest. He barely heard John's muttered curse or Lestrade's heavy breathing as he crouched and parted the tall blades with his hands.

There were five small pearly white teeth lying in the dirt. Sherlock reached and picked one up, cupping it in his palm as he ran his thumb over the smooth bone. It was obvious they had belonged to a child; their size and the level of decay and what some called milk rot was proof enough there. They were also old, the small deposits of blood in the root dried and brown with age.

"Don't touch anything else," he heard Lestrade saying. "Let's get the COD guys in here first." Sherlock wanted to snap at him, inform Lestrade, not for the first time, that he was well aware of proper police procedure. He merely took it upon himself to disregard it.

He was just too… relieved to rightly remind the DI. When he'd seen the teeth, for a few horrible moments he'd thought-

"How on earth are we going to identify them?" John cut into his thoughts, and Sherlock made an irritated noise. Hadn't he told them to shut up?

Picking up where he'd left off, Sherlock had thought for a few horrible moments that the teeth had been Molly's. And then it hit him. He knew they _were _Molly's, and he knew how he could prove it. Sherlock stood, pointlessly brushing dirt from his already soiled suit.

"I've already identified them," he said, stepping back from the clearing.

"Impossible!" John was practically glaring at Sherlock. He dismissed his friend from his mind, and looked at Lestrade who was standing a few feet away talking into his mobile. Sherlock began kicking his way through the grass, pausing to pick Lestrade's car keys from his pocket with nimble fingers as he passed.

"Wait, where are you going?" John shouted after him.

"Proving it!"

"How?"

"Gum!"

Sherlock exited through the gate and walked to Lestrade's car. He glanced back at John only to see him shake his head and look down at the teeth in the grass.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: I meant to have this up on Saturday, I really did. But then there were thrift stores, and bacon, and a mattress store, and chainsaws, and… things were happening, and <strong>_**this **_**didn't happen, but it's happening now. **

**It's at this point that I must convey my gratitude to lifelesslyndsey for possessing the other half of my brain. If it weren't for her letting me talk at her nearly constantly about this I would still be curled in the fetal position under my dining room table sobbing hysterically, trying to think like Sherlock Holmes. And you know what? That's practically **_**fucking impossible. **_

**SEEKER-2000 has bravely signed on to be my beta for this story. Many thanks.**

**Thanks to JaspersMum, conchepcion, katdemon18, mhoopers (give your roommate my apologies!), lori, SEEKER-2000, Murmeltierchen, ThisLooksLikeAJobForMe, eccentricpetal, Vitawash, hadia, somethinginthewayful (your review made me fangirl rather loudly, which was horribly inappropriate as I was in public at the time.), xxL2xx, Snarkiness, fionajane and Purple Yin for the fantastic reviews!**

**Love?**


	6. Chapter 6

_**(Disclaimer: I own nothing related to **__**Sherlock**__**, no copyright infringement intended. I do, however, own the diabolical Mr. Rule.**_ _**I feel the need to put a warning in: here be violence and some disturbing themes. )**_

_**Teeth in the Grass**_

_**Six**_

**..**

If you were to ask Elizabeth Hooper, her daughter had been a rather disgusting child. Always romping around in the mud, ruining summer sun dresses; dirt under her fingernails, skinned knees, long hair that would have been beautiful had the child bothered to brush it. She'd even had the nasty habit of sticking her chewing gum to the backside of her headboard at night before she went to sleep. It was a horrible routine that her mother had done her best to break her of, to no avail. From the time she was old enough to chew the wonderful sugary stuff until the age of thirteen, every night whichever flavor had lasted the longest through that particular day was absently adhered to the lovely white painted wood.

Molly had relayed this story to Sherlock one evening while they'd been lying in bed after a few of their more amorous bedroom activities, and Sherlock had agreed with Molly's mother wholeheartedly. She had, indeed, been a disgusting little girl. Molly had promptly kicked him out of her bed just on the principal of him agreeing with her mother in any fashion. He'd marched naked as the day he was born up to his own flat and demanded John tell him why he'd been rebuffed. It had been an awkward conversation for Doctor Watson; Sherlock standing over his bed in nothing but his skin demanding relationship advice. After his mistake had been conveyed, Sherlock had declared women ridiculous and had gone to bed in his own room.

Now, behind the wheel of Lestrade's car speeding toward Cardiff faster than should ever be allowed, he thought back on that night. His foot pressed harder against the accelerator, and he realized that he _missed _Molly. Sherlock didn't think he'd really ever missed anything in his entire thirty-five years. _How had this happened? _That in itself struck Sherlock; he hadn't been able to see this coming, all of this _caring _was so far beyond his ken that he didn't know how to deal with it.

And so he decided that he wouldn't. Not right then, anyway. The _only _thing that he needed to concentrate on right then was getting Molly back in one piece.

He would deal with matters of his ridiculous heart later.

**..**

_Get outside… Get outside…_

It was Molly's only thought as she took a shuffling step out. She was in agony, ropes biting into the flesh of her wrists, muscles near crying out in protest as she moved. The room around her was cavernous and completely dark as she stumbled along, keeping to the wall, trying to stay upright. The air stank of old, rancid motor oil and something else Molly couldn't identify and didn't really want to.

The cold was beginning to seep into her bones now, rattling up through the soles of her bare feet. On and on she kept walking, staggering, through the dark, seemingly empty room. Occasionally she would step on something small and round, the objects digging into her already raw feet, but there was no way she was stopping to investigate. Feeling along the wall; she had to find a way out.

_Get outside… get outside… get outside…_

Molly felt her way to the end of one wall, and turned with the corner to inspect the next. There was nothing but cracking plaster, and Molly nearly let out a sob of frustration before clamping down upon it. _There has to be a bloody door somewhere. _On and on she went, wondering just how large the room was.

Then, from the room she'd just escaped, came the unmistakable noise of Rule waking. As if amplified, Molly could hear his chair squeak, and his loud curse as he realized that she was no longer on the bed. Tears welled and her heart pounded nearly painfully against her breastbone and she glanced back only to see a flashlight click on and sweep across the room she was in.

For a brief second the light illuminated the door, maybe ten feet in front of her, set into the opposite wall.

Just as Rule's light landed on her, Molly began to run. Her gait was clumsy, bound hands throwing her off balance. Molly knew there was really no hope as Rule's heavy boots pounded across the cement toward her. He had the advantage of light and fully functioning limbs, but that didn't stop her from running as fast as she could until she couldn't any longer.

Rule caught a fist full of her hair from behind and pulled sharply, sending Molly sprawling on the floor. Her labored breath was knocked from her as she hit the ground and he stood panting above her.

"Stupid bitch," he gasped, and Molly realized that it was the first time she'd heard his voice. The horrible grating lisp echoed around the room, and Molly lay on the floor gasping for air. Rule hefted her off the floor and flung her over his shoulder, jostling her broken body cruelly.

He was walking back to that room. _That room. _Panic welled inside of her and Molly began to struggle, kicking and clawing at the man as best she could. Rule seemed unfazed by her efforts and threw her back onto the bed.

"Stupid bitch," he repeated. Rule moved from her sight and she heard the clank of metal on metal. "If Mr. Moriarty catches wind of this… thing won't end well for either of us." More clanking, more stumbling over his own words. "I'm going to have to make sure that you _can't _run."

**..**

The quiet peacefulness of Blair Street was shattered by the short screech of brakes, followed by the slamming of a car door and heavy footfalls as Sherlock beat his way up the front path to the maroon painted door of 1215. The house was dark, and no matter how loudly he pounded on the door, Sherlock couldn't change the fact that there was no one home. He was mindless of the rhododendrons he trampled on looking through one of the tall windows, and finally, in a fit of hurried frustration, shattered the glass, not wanting to take the time to pick the locks on the front door.

In he climbed, shoes crunching over broken glass and fragments of wood, and up to the room that had once been Molly's. The room was still in ruins; drawers hanging open, papers scattered about, mattress flipped off the frame. Sherlock kicked his way through the mess to the white headboard and jerked it away from the wall, legs of the bed scraping against the hardwood floor.

That strange heavy feeling weighed inside of him as he swooped down, crouching between the headboard and the pale pink wall, only blanching slightly at the wads of dried, used chewing gum stuck over nearly every available inch. Sherlock shifted intent on lifting supplies from the kitchen to gather a few samples of the gum, when something between his feet caught his eye.

A white envelope lay on the floor and Sherlock snatched it up without hesitation. He had, of course, recognized it as the same type that held the letter he'd received that very morning. Sherlock's mind was slipping blissfully back into place; his need was nearly as ritualistic as Moriarty's. Without something to focus on, he would wander into more detrimental areas of his psyche, parts where the words _blame _and _guilt _and _worry _ran rampant.

Still crouched on the floor, Sherlock examined the envelope. This one held no letter that much he knew. He slit the thick paper open with his finger and peered inside, his brow furrowing at what he saw.

It was an ordinary one pence.

Date stamped 1981, there was absolutely nothing noteworthy about the coin. Sherlock turned it over and over in his hands, brow furrowed, glaring at it. He nearly jumped when the mobile in his breast pocket sounded. Unlocking the screen on the pink phone, Sherlock read the latest message.

_Six hours. Hurry, hurry. _

Sherlock tucked the one pence into his pocket and moved from Molly's childhood bedroom, down through the house and into the kitchen. Rifling through cabinets and drawers, it only took him a few minutes to find what he needed to collect four good samples from the back of the white painted headboard, and a few more after that he was in Lestrade's car, speeding back to London.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: Everyone stop. Take a breath. *pats the air around your shoulder*. We're good, yes? You-all are <strong>_**fantastic **_**for sticking with me. The support and wonderful feedback is so appreciated. **

**Now, on an unrelated note, I can't be the only one to notice that Benedict Cumberbatch is the living embodiment of Ichabod Crane. Original Crane, not Burton/Depp Crane. **_**Sleepy Hollow **_**was a good movie on its face, but to me that wasn't Ichabod Crane. Someone should write to Moffat and Gatiss and request **_**that. **_

**Thanks to Murmeltierchen, preconie, JaspersMum, eccentricpetal, mhoopers, somethinginthewayful, Sofeline333, katdemon18, booda77, ThisLooksLikeAJobForMe (the chainsaw- the lovely tree in my front yard had to be cut down, as it was tearing up my gutters and such. Made me sad for about a full minute, but then it was like hey! I've got bacon.) Dizzybunny, PurpleYin, Jareth's Genevieve (I will NEVER stop… never.), scarlettwonder, xxLxx, lori and Hellscrimsonangel for reviewing chapter five!**

**A multitude of gratitude to SEEKER-2000 for the BJ. And by that, I mean beta-job, of course. **


	7. Chapter 7

_**(Disclaimer: I own nothing related to **__**Sherlock**__**, no copyright infringement intended. I do, however, own the despicable Mr. Rule.**_ _**I feel the need to put a warning in: here be violence and some disturbing themes. )**_

_**Teeth in the Grass**_

_**Seven**_

**..**

If he could have possibly mustered it, Sherlock may have cursed Molly the moment he stepped into her basement lab in St. Bartholomew's Hospital. As it was, he was having a difficult enough time keeping his composure.

When he'd slammed through the heavy metal door into the lab, he found it blazing with fluorescent lights and whirring machines when he'd expected a dark and still room. It seemed they'd temporarily replaced _his _pathologist with some… intern. To make matters worse, the idiotic boy was doing everything _wrong_. Molly had always kept the room dimmed; claiming that it made for a calmer working environment, but this fool had every light in the place burning. Things were moved, and Molly's things were just gone; packed away somewhere, he assumed.

In short, _Doctor _Knight had ruined one of the few places that made his Molly truly happy. Really, it hadn't been enough to simply send the man from the room near to tears. It lacked all the usual satisfaction and he knew that he would have to put everything to rights before she could see this _monstrosity _that she had once called her lab. After he got her back; _if _he got her back.

Sherlock shook his head sharply; _not now_.

Sherlock figured he'd have about thirty minutes before the _substitute_ tattled to the director of the hospital, and he would be forcibly removed from the premises again. It would be more than enough time; it would have to be. He'd already wasted over two of his precious six hours driving back to London, and then another retrieving the teeth from Lestrade. This left him with just over two to find his next clue, or… he couldn't think about or.

If he could determine without a doubt that the teeth he'd found had been Molly's, that would also prove a few other things. The first was rather obvious, but helpful all the same: every clue would be directly related to Molly. The second he should probably notify someone about: Moriarty's henchmen had been coming and going easy as they please from the Hooper household in Cardiff.

Settling onto his usual stool, Sherlock pulled three things from his pockets; an evidence bag containing the teeth, a kitchen bag holding the gum samples, and the one pence penny he found in Molly's bedroom. The penny was his next clue, he knew, but what it meant still eluded him. As Sherlock set about his task, he recalled something he'd seen in the sitting room of the house on Blair Street. Taking his mobile from his trouser pocket he sent a text to John. Then, as an afterthought, one to Lestrade, informing him that the DI should advise the Cardiff police to up their surveillance on Mrs. Elizabeth Hooper and Mrs. Janet Saul.

**..**

Molly had been previously unaware that a person could feel this much pain without shutting down. Shouldn't her psyche have broken by this point? The least they could let her do was go blissfully insane; but no, apparently, she was too _strong _for that. Pain shot through her right leg every time she _blinked; _it was so intense she couldn't pinpoint what hurt the most. Her bindings were so tight that her hands and feet had lost feeling several hours ago.

In the wooden chair beside her bed, all traces of his normal grin gone, was Rule. The amount of hatred she felt for the man kept her from sinking into hopelessness; rivaled only by the deep loathing that had settled into her for Rule's employer. The dark feeling had curled around her bones, and Molly promised herself if she made it out of here alive, she would somehow make them pay dearly.

**..**

The results told him what he'd already known; the teeth were Molly's, pulled at some point during her childhood. This meant that the penny that he twirled between his fingers had something to do with her past. What, exactly, he would be able to determine as soon as John-

Sherlock's mobile vibrated in his pocket, interrupting the thought. The display showed that it was exactly who he'd been waiting for.

"John," he answered.

"Finally got hold of Molly's mum. The framed coin you saw in her sitting room belonged to Molly's father."

"But what does that have to do with Molly?" Sherlock wondered aloud, tone laced with frustration.

"I'm getting to that." John said, sounding slightly winded. "She and her Dad used to collect coins, according to her mum it was a big thing with them."

"Excellent!" Sherlock felt the adrenaline of this new discovery flood through him. "Where is the rest of his collection?"

"That's the thing," John told him. "It was buried with him. Molly apparently insisted."

Sherlock's brow furrowed with frustration. He would never have time to drive back to Cardiff, not with only a little over an hour remaining.

"Call Mrs. Hooper back," Sherlock told John. "Find out where he was buried, and call me immediately."

Sherlock disconnected and leaned back on his stool. All of these sentimental clues were throwing him; what happened to the days of strangers strapped with Semtex? It had been so much _easier _then. He hadn't known those people, he hadn't _cared_. Not like he did now.

What Sherlock was having trouble puzzling out was why did Moriarty take Molly? Why not John, or Mrs. Hudson? It was true that Molly had spent personal one-on-one time with Moriarty while he'd been posing as Jim from IT, something that grated at him. It still threw him that he hadn't known, that he hadn't picked up on it somehow in his brief encounter with the fraud. Sherlock remembered with a twinge of shame the way he'd snapped at Molly the night she'd been taken. Her past with Moriarty shouldn't have bothered him like it did, after all how could she have known his real identity if Sherlock himself hadn't been able to detect it?

Sherlock shook his head sharply again as his mobile rang and he answered without looking at the display.

"What?" he snapped down the line.

"Sherlock," John's voice came down the line.

"What did you find out?" the detective asked impatiently, standing from his stool.

"Molly's Dad was buried in London, much to her mother's displeasure."

"Why-"

"He apparently loved the city," John cut across him. "Visited all the time, brought Molly. He moved to Cardiff because his wife wanted to be close to her parents."

"Which cemetery?"

"Kensal Green-"

Sherlock disconnected and rushed from the lab, through the hospital and out onto the street and hailed a cab, penny in his pocket.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: I know it seems like nothing has really happened in the last two chapters and I know they're rather short, but they're essential, I assure you, and the action will pick back up in the next chapter. <strong>

**Thanks to booda77, SEEKER-2000, Murmeltierchin, ThisLooksLikeAJobForMe, kelly1981, Dizzybunny, katdemon18, PurpleYin, FangFan, eccentricpetal, conchepcion (No you don't. You love me, and you know it.) mhoopers, lori and .mightier for reviewing chapter six! **

**Much groveling to my beta, SEEKER-2000 for not sending this to her. Circumstances were extenuating. **


	8. Chapter 8

_**(Disclaimer: I own nothing related to **__**Sherlock**__**, no copyright infringement intended. I do, however, own the disreputable Mr. Rule.**_ _**I feel the need to put a warning in: here be violence and some disturbing themes. )**_

_**Teeth in the Grass**_

_**Chapter Eight**_

**..**

_Molly lay flat on her back surrounded by scattered papers, files and still quite hot coffee that was now soaking into her white blouse. Linoleum was cold underneath her, and a single paper still floated through the air, gently landing on her face. _

"_Are you quite alright?" Came the deep voice above her, the man it belonged to now obscured from her vision. _

"_You scared the _hell _out of me," Molly said between clenched teeth, reaching up to knock the toxicology report from her face. _

"_Obviously."_

_She glared at him for a few moments before hauling herself to her feet. Molly began to gather the spilled papers and file folders, as the man stood and watched her. Picking up her Styrofoam coffee cup, she stepped around the man and began stalking toward the pathology lab in the basement of St. Bart's, her new lab, as she had been doing before this man had popped around the corner at her, scaring ten years off her life, making her slip on the freshly waxed linoleum. Footsteps other than her own echoed around the cavernous hallway and she realized that the man was following her._

_He was quite attractive, she supposed. Handsome, if a somewhat oddly shaped face with an aquiline nose, full lips and narrow eyes. He had a mop of unruly dark hair, and was rather tall and thin in the extreme. But handsome or not, he was following her into a restricted access part of the hospital, and Molly didn't want anything to jeopardize her new position here. She was the youngest, not to mention the only female, pathologist on staff, and the last thing she wanted was the hospital uppers regretting their decision to bring her on. Molly stopped and rounded on him. _

"_Can I help you with something?" she said, with every intention of telling him to sod off. _

_But then he smiled, and Molly noticed that there were barely visible dimples edging it. What happened next was mostly a blur; that charming grin closing in on her, the man asking in the sweetest of tones for access to one of the lab machines, and much to Molly's own surprise, she found herself agreeing. They'd worked in silence in the dim of her lab until Molly glanced his way and found that he was gone. Setting her own reports to the side, Molly moved to where he'd been working and saw that everything had been put away exactly as he'd found it, in meticulous order. A sheet of unlined white paper lay on the metal table, a few lines of flowing script addressed to her. _

_This is my mobile number; I need you to contact me with the results of these tests as soon as they are available. Text, do not call. Never use it recreationally. –Sherlock Holmes._

_Molly programmed the number into her own mobile and began to crumple the paper but on second thought smoothed it out, folded it once and slipped it into the pocket of her lab coat. _

The bed underneath Molly jarred, sending pain shooting through her leg and the rest of her body, drawing her out of her recollections. She'd been able to block her pain and despair for just a little while, a blissful small amount of time, but now a raised voice drew her attention away from herself and to the two men standing by her bed.

"How in the _fucking _hell did this happen, Rule?" Jim Moriarty's voice was filled with anger.

Molly blinked through bleary eyes and saw Jim pointing toward her swollen, black and purple bruised leg.

"You were not to _touch _her unless authorized by me, _you idiot!_"

"I'm sorry Mr. Moriarty, but she tried to escape and-"

"She's tied up, how was she going to escape?"

The sudden silence from Rule was telling and Moriarty cursed under his breath.

"Last chance, Rule. This is your _last chance_. If you even so much as _look _at her the wrong way without my supervision, I will kill you. _Personally_. You don't want that, do you?"

"No, Mr. Moriarty," Rule mumbled.

Footsteps echoed off concrete around the cavernous room, and when Molly looked up again, Jim was gone. Rule was glowering down at her, and for a moment, she thought that he was going to start in on her again. Molly let out a breath when he just sat down heavily in his chair.

The conversation she'd overheard confused her. _Why would Jim care if Rule hurt me more than necessary? _She was just a pawn in his game with Sherlock, always had been. His anger over the situation was puzzling. Molly lay there trying to think, but the burning pain in her left foot chose that moment to shoot spikes of agony up through her body, making her whimper.

**..**

The taxi rolled to a stop just outside the gates of Kensal Green cemetery and John Watson threw a few notes to the driver before stepping out. He was looking for Sherlock, dreading what he would find if he did. He knew exactly what his friend had in mind, and knew without a doubt that his own assistance would be required. Stalking through rows of stones and markers, John finally spotted the dark form of the detective standing with his hands in his pockets, looking down at a small headstone. As he approached, John felt a heavy ball of dread drop into his stomach when he saw two long handled shovels lying on the ground in front of a simple stone that read:

_James D. Hooper_

_Beloved Husband and Father_

_October 4, 1951 – May 13, 1997_

"No, Sherlock," John said, panting after running through the cemetery. "There are procedures, and-"

"We don't have time to dally with legalities," Sherlock told him, and John looked up at his friend from where he'd braced his hands on his knees, attempting to regain his breath. He really should keep himself in better shape, considering all of the running he did now a days. "Our next clue is down there, I _know _it."

John stood up straight as Sherlock removed his suit jacket and draped it over the headstone. Sherlock swooped down and snatched both shovels, thrusting one toward John before using his own to remove the layer of sod over Molly's father's grave.

**..**

The door to the dim room opened and fell shut, and Molly knew from the way Rule scrambled to his feet that it was Jim. Weakly, she turned her head, listening to his approaching footsteps until he was within the circle of light that illuminated the bed. He'd only been gone for a few hours, and Molly knew that his return so soon could mean nothing good for her. Nothing in this situation could mean anything good for her. Jim ignored Rule and stood next to the bed, hands clasped behind his back, looking at Molly. She met his stare dead on and he gave her an amused smile, cocking his head slightly to the right. His grin grew when Molly didn't waver, and she wondered what he found so amusing. Was it the fact that they hadn't broken her yet? Or was he grinning at her foolish hope? The latter was more likely. Finally Jim broke the small staring contest and turned to address Rule.

"He's running out of time. Make yourself scarce until I call for you."

"Yes sir," Rule's rasp echoed through the room, and then he was gone.

Jim approached the chair Rule had been sitting in and frowned down at it. With a small sniff, he removed a package of sanitary wipes from his pocket and thoroughly wiped the seat down with one before tossing it out of sight, then lowering himself into the chair. Molly watched him through slotted eyes, mind whirring with suspicion. Jim picked a piece of invisible lint off the knee of his pressed suit pants, straightened his already perfect sleeve and settled back into the hard wooden chair.

"So," he said, tapping his knee in a seemingly absent pattern, "how are you, dear heart?"

Molly's hair fell over her face as she turned her head fully toward him, and she brushed it away with her bound hands. "That is a very stupid question, now isn't it, Jim?"

"Yes, I suppose it is." He frowned dramatically. "I'm sorry about your leg."

She snorted loudly. "No you're not."

"Alright, no I'm not. Still, you shouldn't have tried to escape."

"I saw an opportunity, I took it. What else would you have me do?" Molly marveled over how easily she was speaking with him. Subject matter aside, it was as if they were on one of their dates from the year previous.

"True, I'd've been disappointed had you not. Seems all that time with Holmes has given you some backbone." Jim's near black eyes bored into hers, but she wouldn't allow herself to look away. Internally, she blanched at the mention of Sherlock, wondering just how much effort he was putting into finding her. She supposed quite a bit; when Sherlock set to a task, he went at it with everything he had. Although she knew that he was more occupied with the game itself than finding her personally, she couldn't help but retain hope. He claimed that there was no such thing as heroes, but he was wrong in that instance; he was hers.

Molly swallowed thickly, and pushed Sherlock from her mind. "Your man Rule doesn't seem to be firing on all cylinders. I'm surprised you put up with him."

Jim shrugged. "He has his charms." His eyes flicked along her body, still covered with the thin, once white T-shirt.

"So I've experienced."

"You seem to be taking it in stride."

"I manage."

"How?"

"By imagining all of the ways I can track you down and kill you, should I get out of here alive."

Jim threw his head back and laughed, deep and throaty. Molly shifted, wincing when the rough material of the mattress scratched along her injured leg.

"I'm completely serious, you know," she said to him, voice wavering slightly with the pain. "I will kill you. And your man too."

"Oh, Molly," Jim said, chuckles ringing through his words, "I completely believe you."

**..**

Sweat ran in rivulets down John's back and neck, soaking his blue long sleeved shirt as he worked beside Sherlock, digging up the remains of Molly Hooper's father. They'd worked in silence for some minutes before Sherlock began muttering to himself, his words too low for John to make out. John nearly jumped out of his skin as the metal tip of Sherlock's shovel struck wood and his mobile began ringing in the pocket of his jeans. His own shovel was snatched out of his hands and he just barely avoided getting his head smashed in with it as Sherlock threw them out of the desecrated grave. Wiping dirt from his hands on his jeans, John pulled his mobile out of his pocket and checked the display.

"Ignore it!" Sherlock barked at him, hunching to brush the remaining dirt from the lid of the mahogany coffin.

"It's Molly's mother," John told him, answering the call when he received a curt nod from his companion.

"Hello?" he said into the receiver.

"_Mr. Watson?"_

"Yes, Mrs. Hooper. How can I help you?"

"_I've just remembered something else, I'm not sure that it'll help, but I wanted to relay it to you anyway."_

"I'm listening," he assured her, watching Sherlock pull a jackknife from his trouser pocket and begins to pry the coffin open.

"_It's about those silly coins. There was a special one that Molly kept from James's coffin. They'd found it together in a wishing fountain at a park they used to go to in London, James said it was his lucky penny because it was date stamped with Molly's birth year and they'd found it together."_

This tore John's attention from Sherlock, and he felt horror lurch in his gut. They were in the wrong place. "Mrs. Hooper, where is this park?" he asked, voice laced with desperate urgency.

After getting the name of the park from Elizabeth, John hung up and jammed his mobile back into his pocket. "Sherlock, it's not here," he said, already turning to climb out of the grave.

"What are you talking about?"

John relayed the story Elizabeth had told him to Sherlock, who went completely still for the span of a second.

"_Goddamn sentimental fools!_" Sherlock burst out with, his face flushing red, tossing down his jackknife and hoisting himself out of the grave.

John was hot on Sherlock's heels as the detective raced from the cemetery, each individual tick of his wristwatch ringing in his ears, as loud as bells.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> **So sorry for my lateness! Last week my children were on Spring Break, and I hadn't realized how much writing I actually do while they're in school. Needless to say, I didn't get much written last week. I did plant a few trees in my yard, though. And built some pretty bitchin' model fighter planes with my sons. So, hey, points for being an awesome Mom. **

**Thanks so much to everyone who is reading, favorite-ing, and adding this thing to their alerts. And thank you to conchepcion, Petra Todd (loving the new story, **_**The Pirate and The Doctor. **_**le swoon!), Dizzybunny, Murmeltierchen, katdemon18, PurpleYin (you were right about the coin date having significance), SEEKER-2000, fukyuu77, eccentricpetal, xxLxx, lori, quill. Is. mightier (sorry for screwing up your name last chapter!) and kawoosh for reviewing chapter seven!**

**Also, come and follow me on Twitter if you'd like. User name is Missus_Monster. Just be warned, I sometimes tweet about penises. And transvestites. **


	9. Chapter 9

_**(Disclaimer: I own nothing related **__**Sherlock**__**, no copyright infringement intended. I do, however, own the deadly Mr. Rule. I feel the need to include a warning: here be violence and some slightly disturbing themes.)**_

_**Teeth in the Grass**_

_**Chapter Nine**_

**..**

Sherlock was unaware of the unsettling figure he cut as he rushed from the back of the cab and through the entrance of the park. Dirt, mud and bits of sod streaked his face and arms where they were exposed by the shirt sleeves he'd rolled to his elbows. Dark hair was tangled and wild from the running of agitated fingers through it; fingers that were twitching uncontrollably as his mind raced along with his feet. The normally crisp suit was wrinkled and stained, a long tear rent the sleeve of the dark purple button up he'd been wearing for the past three days, but he couldn't for the life of him remember when that had happened. Which was completely absurd, because how many times did he have to repeat it, even to himself? Sherlock Holmes didn't _forget _anything, but he _did_ hate repeating himself. He also hated getting things wrong; just the possibility of missing something because his analytical mind didn't _understand _rankled him to no end. As it was, waves of an unfamiliar feeling were crashing through him; a feeling that something inside of his mind informed him was _self-loathing_. Because he was going to run out of time, and Molly was going to pay the price of his incompetence again.

John Watson trudged along faithfully behind him as mother's ushered their children away from the deranged looking man running through the park toward the wishing well. It seemed wristwatches and mounted clocks were jumping at him from all points to mock the fact that he was going to fail again, and Sherlock attempted to push all but the task at hand from his mind, but as always that mission was a fruitless one.

He stopped abruptly at the stone lip of the well, John nearly bowling into his back with his momentum. Frantic eyes searched the perimeter, finding nothing. _Nothing, _Sherlock fumed. _Any one of these… pedestrians could have tampered with the clue, picked it up and tossed aside like the thoughtless fools they were. _From around the circumference of the large wishing well that was really more of a fountain to the cobble-stone paved area around it, Sherlock searched, John hovering behind him wondering what he could do to help but knowing the answer was a resounding _nothing_.

With mere minutes of their time left, Sherlock snapped completely and stepped into the fountain itself, soaking his clothes as he dropped it his knees and began skimming his fingers across the small mountains of discarded coins on the stone floor.

Under normal circumstances this is where John would begin reassuring the gathering crowd that his companion was indeed quite sane, and no, he was of no threat to their person. But this was not a normal situation, and John felt his own usual rock-hard composure cracking as time ran out and Sherlock flailed frantically in the fountain.

With every swipe of his hand swirls of rust plumed from the aged coins, mixing with the dirt washing from his skin, obscuring his vision through the water. He could not fail again, he just _couldn't_. But no matter how strong his will was, it didn't stop the mobile in his breast pocket from buzzing with its jaunty tune as the sun was beginning to dip under the skyline and last minute of his six hours ticked by.

**..**

"Three, two aaand one," Jim said cheerfully, counting as the hands on his thick platinum watch ticked. "How utterly disappointing. And he was so close." Jim heaved a great sigh and shook his head; he pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket and began tapping away at the keys.

"So close to what?" Molly asked, knowing that she probably didn't want to know the answer.

Jim looked up absently from his mobile. "Oh, lover-boy failed again. Too bad, really. You're already so…damaged."

A hot wave of nausea rolled through her and Molly fought against it, squeezing her eyes shut. Jim clicked another button on his mobile and a mechanical sound echoed through the room, signaling that he'd sent a text. His suit rustled as he shifted in the chair and Molly slowly opened her eyes, meeting his amused ones.

"This game really has been interesting," he said. "So… revealing." Eyes flicked over her bare legs. "Of course, it's nothing I haven't seen before," Jim leaned toward the bed, speaking conspiratorially. "I lied, you know. I didn't find you lacking at all- fancy another go? A quickie for old times' sake?"

The nausea was back, heavy and greasy in her stomach. "I hate you so fucking much."

Jim looked surprised, the fake expression ridiculously exaggerated on his face. "Now what did I ever do to you?"

Her snort was laced with a sob she couldn't hold back as she tried not to think about what was to come. The heavy metal door opened and Rule walked into the room, face bright with excitement.

**..**

Sherlock knew a great number of things, too many to ever really catalogue, but there was one thing that stood out glaringly in that moment, kneeling waist deep in dirty water: he did not want to answer this call. But if he didn't, Molly would be completely alone, and that was something that he could just not allow. His fingers were numb as he fumbled with the phone, and the first thing he heard was Jim Moriarty's voice.

"…_I lied, you know. I didn't find you lacking at all- fancy another go? A quickie for old times' sake?"_

"_I hate you so fucking much_." From Molly, and Sherlock felt something inside of him twist at the sound of her coherent voice.

"_Now what did I ever do to you?" _

And then it started and Sherlock felt a swell of hatred curl around his very being so intense it nearly took his breath away.

He was barely aware of someone, he assumed John, pulling him bodily from the water.

**..**

John was beyond concerned, far passed sickened and just… out of his depth.

He'd managed to get Sherlock home, and with the help of Mrs. Hudson had wrestled his friend into clean, dry clothing. John had been unable to pry the pink mobile from Sherlock's death grip and so the short staccato bursts of Molly's increasingly hoarse screams had echoed through the entire place. Eventually it became too much for Mrs. Hudson who'd fled to her own flat in tears. The call ended shortly after and John had maneuvered an immobile Sherlock into one of the chairs in the sitting room. The detective had curled up into himself, balancing the mobile on his left knee, closed his eyes, and hadn't moved since, mop of curls in riot against the gray cushion of the chair.

It seemed as if the light had been sucked out of him, and that terrified John. He remembered what Moriarty had once said to Sherlock; that he would _burn _ the _heart _out of him. Somehow the ruthless man had realized just _who _Sherlock's heart was before even Sherlock himself had. This new game was following up on an old threat.

John sat heavily in the chair opposite Sherlock, eyeing his friend and thought that Moriarty was succeeding.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: I know, I know, another chapter of nothing really happening. Don't hate me. Another character is coming into the story next chapter, and things really start amping up with their arrival. Any guesses? <strong>

**Reviewing high-fives to Petra Todd, SEEKER-2000, katdemon18, mhoopers, Murmeltierchen, lori (your reviews always stroke my ego, and it enjoys it thoroughly!), Mrs. Max MacDowell (oh my freaking nom. Both my muse and I are in your debt!), booda77 (I agree with your philosophy completely, ma'am!), xxL2xx, Nocturnias, eccentricpetal, Faye Kinitt (of course it's not wrong! Who wants to **_**work**_**?), dizzybunny and ThisLooksLikeAJobForMe for the reviews for chapter eight. You guys are fantastic. **

**Now, a little shameless self-promotion: Thanks to everyone who reviewed my new Sherlolly one-shot, Sleeping Giants! Those of you who haven't read it yet, (nudge-nudge) I'll be forever grateful if you dropped by and showed it some love. **

**Next chapter up Friday! Until then, **

**Mrs. Monster**


	10. Chapter 10

_**(Disclaimer: I own nothing related to **__**Sherlock**__**. No copyright infringement intended. I do, however, own the devilish Mr. Rule. I feel the need to put in a warning: here be violence and some slightly disturbing themes.)**_

_**Teeth in the Grass**_

_**Ten**_

They'd been sitting there, John watching Sherlock, Sherlock watching nothing, for nearly an hour when footsteps were heard on the staircase leading up to their flat. It was a familiar gait, one that even John could place, and he was unsurprised when Mycroft Holmes pushed the door open with the tip of his black umbrella and stepped into the sitting room. There was no reaction from the immobile man in the chair upon his brother's arrival, which was most unusual. Gone was the normal arrogance, and the elder Holmes brother's face was creased with genuine concern. John knew that it was more concern for Sherlock's well-being than Molly's, the actual victim in this situation, but he'd learned long ago not to attempt to puzzle out the inner workings of a Holmes-mind. Mycroft hung his umbrella from his forearm and tightened his fingers minutely around a large, sealed plastic bag.

After looking his brother over for a moment, Mycroft turned to John. "I received a call about a filth covered mad man making a spectacle of himself in a public park," he said, and both John and Mycroft turned eyes on Sherlock again. "Of course I immediately knew that it was you, brother. Your dear friend Lestrade has brought me up on your current… situation just now, and I can't help but wonder how I wasn't informed earlier."

The man that controlled nearly the entire British government looked genuinely perplexed over this. He switched the bag to his left hand and frowned at the ground for a moment before shaking himself and looking back to Sherlock; John could now see the outline of a white envelope through the layers of plastic. "Naturally I dispatched a few of my employees to find this "clue" that you failed to…" He trailed off as Sherlock finally reacted to his presence, looking up sharply and glaring at his older brother.

"Not the time, Mycroft," John mumbled, eyes still on the package. He noticed that Sherlock's attention had zeroed in on it as well.

"Of course." Mycroft cleared his throat, and moved to hand Sherlock the sealed bag before pulling it back slightly as his brother reached for it. "I'll warn you now, it's not pretty, Sherlock."

Sherlock's brow furrowed as he took the bag from Mycroft; whatever the clue happened to be, he was sure he'd seen worse, as his brother was well aware of. His fingers were oddly shaking as he broke the bag's seal and reached inside for the envelope, which was encased in more airtight plastic, slick under his fingers from where it had been submerged in the fountain.

The white envelope was the same stock the other's had been, and he knew again that this one contained no simple note. Sherlock was aware of the two sets of eyes on him as he lifted the already-broken flap and peered inside. The same rage and hate that he'd felt mere hours previous crashed through him again as he glared at the contents of the envelope. He let the flap drop and laid the envelope on the table next to his chair, which he rose from in one swift movement, ignoring both John and Mycroft as he swept from the sitting room and into the kitchen. His hands were shaking with ill-contained anger, the red-hot feeling surging through his body making it feel as though his blood were fairly _boiling. _

John watched Sherlock leave the room and looked to Mycroft who was still staring in the direction his brother had gone. He picked up the envelope Sherlock had set aside with every intention of looking inside but was distracted by a loud crash from the kitchen, followed immediately by the shattering of glass. He rushed the short distance and hovered in the doorway to the kitchen, unable and not wanting to interfere as his friend swept dishes, test tubes and beakers from the table, sending them crashing to the linoleum floor. Sherlock's face was flushed red, twisted up into a grimace in a display of emotion that John had never seen from his flat-mate before. John finally shoved the envelope into Mycroft's hands and rushed forward when Sherlock seized his microscope and began bashing it against the wooden table, splinters and metal parts flying through the air, his bare feet crunching over the broken glass that littered the floor.

Blood smeared across the white floor and John wrestled the microscope from Sherlock's grip, the expensive piece of lab equipment flying through the air as the enraged man tackled his friend, vision lost in a haze of red. Sherlock couldn't process the sudden onslaught of emotion that was coursing through his body. He knew the chemistry of it, of course; the neurotransmitters, the testosterone, the adrenaline. He knewand understoodall of this, but he'd never _experienced _it before. He'd worked so hard to keep his emotions at bay throughout this entire… case, his emotions for the mousy pathologist who lived in one basement and worked in another; his worry, his longing, his _tender _feelings. But now… the rage had gotten the better of him, and he swore to himself that Jim Moriarty would die a slow death; he would _burn _and he would _suffer. _

Military training notwithstanding, John still had quite a bit of muscle on his lanky friend and easily took the upper hand, flipping them over, pinning Sherlock to the floor. He could feel shards of glass digging into his knees through his pants, but he kept his focus on Sherlock, who seemed to be calming rapidly. Sherlock's chest heaved with great breaths, and John was only vaguely aware of Mycroft hovering in the doorway between rooms.

"John, you can get off of me now."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite."

Sherlock was lying on the floor, the red flush fading from his pale skin, eyes closed as he attempted to control his breathing. John reluctantly levered himself up, and then reached down to help Sherlock to his feet. Calmly, Sherlock left the room, leaving a trail of bloody footprints, and John heard his bedroom door click shut a few seconds later.

"What in the _hell _was that all about?" John asked, looking to Mycroft.

Wordlessly, Mycroft handed John the white envelope. With a creased brow he lifted the flap, and John's jaw immediately tightened and he felt a surge of rage all his own as he looked down at what appeared to be Molly Hooper's severed little toe.

**..**

The thing about being in a near hopeless situation was that you were almost forced to look at the bright side of things. Like how this last round with Rule hadn't seemed nearly as severe as the last, and she'd lost a minimal amount of blood. But then Molly couldn't decide if she saw that as a good or bad thing; minimal blood loss meant she'd last a lot longer, and while that would give Sherlock more time to find her, it would also mean being _here. _And Molly knew that her fight was waning quickly. Both her mind and her body were exhausted, and she was fast coming to the conclusion that she just wanted this to be over, either way.

She could hear Rule eating, sitting next to her chewing with his mouth open. Molly couldn't remember the last time she ate something solid, and began to wonder just exactly how long she'd been here, on this bed. Now that she thought on it, she couldn't have been here longer than a few weeks, but it seemed like so much longer; months even years. She looked over as Rule stood from his chair and moved from her line of sight, returning moments later with a bottleful of whatever liquid nutritional supplement they'd been feeding her. Molly grimaced and turned her face away, wondering if she could choke any more of the stuff down without vomiting.

A bitter chill broke out across her skin as Rule approached her, and Molly thought about how she didn't want to be broken, but whatever strength she had was falling away, layer by layer.

**..**

_The air smelled of vanilla as Sherlock lay in Molly's bed in nothing but his skin, waiting for her to get out of the shower. For a reason that Sherlock couldn't begin to fathom, she insisted on showering thoroughly after returning from work before she would allow them to engage in anything pleasurable. She always emerged smelling like lemon juice and vanilla, though, and Sherlock had to admit that it was a pleasing combination. _

_As they lay panting in the aftermath, Sherlock was wondering just when Molly had gotten flipped around so that her feet were near his face when she had been on top of him during their encounter. His hand encircled her ankle and slid up her calf, and he followed the trail of his hand with his lips, smirking when he noticed Molly's toes curling. Speaking of her toes…_

"_What in the hell is wrong with your little toe?" He took hold of the slightly mangled little appendage and held it up for inspection. _

"_Sherlock! Stop touching my feet!" Molly was giggling at his unintentional tickling and jerked her foot from his grasp. "And there's nothing wrong with it. Just a childhood accident."_

"_Did your sibling also viciously stomp on your feet?"_

"_What? No." Molly pulled her legs toward her, and then adjusted to crawl up the bed and collapse next to him. "Bowling accident. My Dad used to take me on our trips here, and he dropped a ball on my foot once. It hurt like hell…" _

In his bedroom, Sherlock brought himself out of the memory, shaking away the olfactory recollection of lemons and vanilla. Sometime while he'd been forcing his _emotions _back into their tiny little closet in his mind palace, John had come in and doctored the mess he'd made of his feet and hands during his _moment _in the kitchen. He wasn't sure when Mycroft had left, but that hardly mattered.

No, what mattered was he knew _exactly_ where to find his next clue.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: Well hey, guess what? One more chapter of this before we move on to the second half of the story. What will happen? Who knows? Well, I do, but you don't! Hehe. Will Molly be rescued? Will she die? You'll have to wait to find out, now won't you?<strong>

**Thanks to coloradoandcolorado1, eccentricpetal, xxxmylifeisadreamsweetyxxx, BeatnikFreak, katdemon18, FangFan, Murmeltierchen, Dizzybunny, ThisLooksLikeAJobForMe, SEEKER-2000 and Juze for reviewing chapter nine!**

**Now, if you leave me a review, I will write a Sherlock/Molly smutty flashback outtake. Won't that be lovely? Review, and I'll make it happen. **


	11. Chapter 11

_**(Disclaimer: I own nothing related to **__**Sherlock**__**. No copyright infringement intended. I feel the need to include a warning: here be violence and some slightly disturbing themes.)**_

_**Teeth in the Grass**_

_**Eleven**_

**..**

Link's Bowling Emporium was bright with buzzing fluorescent track lighting; colored bulbs lit each lane, ranging from purple, blue, red and green. The air was thick with spray disinfectant and talcum powder; the crash of pins and the roll of bowling balls down highly waxed lanes. Sherlock saw everything, discarding useless observations as quickly as he took them in. Nine out of ten lanes were open and in use, many by families out for a Sunday afternoon. The fifth lane, directly in the center, was darkened, it's (as he deduced from the red, purple, blue, green pattern) red light extinguished, pins absent.

John was at his back, constant, something he could very nearly always count on, and Sherlock spoke, not bothering to turn around. "Go and find out why that lane is closed." A rustle of clothing and John was gone.

As a rule, Sherlock discarded instinct and _gut feelings _for facts and hard evidence that normally only he could detect. He was a man of science and as such only believed what could be seen with his very own eyes. Right then, though, he had a _gut feeling _that he desperately wanted to believe in, and that was that this game was nearly over. They were drawing close, very close, to the conclusion, and soon it would end, one way or another. John was back, speaking in his ear.

"Someone broke in last night and disabled the machinery, and…"

Sherlock didn't wait for him to finish his sentence, and instead made a bee-line for the closed lane. He barely registered John's should of "Sherlock, _wait! _You can't-" before he stepped onto the slick floor and his feet slid out from under him. All the breath rushed from his body as he landed on his back, but he didn't pause to retain it. Sherlock hauled himself up and stepped carefully into the right-hand gutter, rushing down the lane as fast as he was able. Sure enough, the machinery was nearly destroyed as he stuck his head inside, eyes immediately landing on the white envelope taped to a torn-apart piston.

Once he and John were outside the cloying bowling emporium, he tore the flap open and upended the contents into his waiting hand; a small, square dark blue button. In his breast pocket, the pink mobile pinged.

_Well done, Mr. Holmes. You're close to the treasure, but what will be left of your heart when you find it? I'll give you a break this round: six hours to find her._

**..**

_Button, button who's got the button? _Sherlock thought. _I do, and I don't know what in the hell it means. _The small square blue button was laying on the damaged table in his and John's kitchen. Hands braced on either side of it, Sherlock narrowed his eyes, glaring at the button as if willing it to spill its own secrets. He wasn't aware of Mycroft entering the flat until his brother spoke.

"It's not going to speak, Sherlock, no matter how hard you glare at it."

"Shut up, Mycroft."

His vision of the button was obscured by Mycroft dropping a thin file onto the table in front of him.

"All of the information that I've… gathered on Miss Hooper."

"Why would you gather-"

"Why would I gather information on your girlfriend?" Mycroft cut across him.

"She's not my-" Sherlock began to automatically correct him, but stopped himself.

Mycroft grinned, sharp and shark-like, and nudged the file closer. "I thought some of the things in there may be of some use in your endeavor to get the girl back."

"I don't need _your _help."

"Now is not the time for rebellion, brother. I am merely trying to keep you from _heartache_, should something… permanent happen to Miss Hooper." Mycroft shuddered at the word heartache.

Reluctant as he was to admit that his brother was right in any manner, or accept his help, Sherlock never-the-less pulled the file closer. "It's _Doctor _Hooper, Mycroft," he corrected under his breath, and flipped the manila folder open.

He didn't register Mycroft's departure until long after his brother stepped out of the flat.

**..**

As it turned out, Matthias Hopper, Molly's maternal grandfather, was employed at a button factory in Cardiff until a sudden heart attack killed him in 1993. After a short bit of research, Sherlock discovered that the very factory that had employed Matthias for forty-six years was, in fact, the same factory that had manufactured the very button that lay on his kitchen table. Another computer search and he had the address of the dilapidated building.

Sherlock looked around for John, but realized that he was downstairs in Mrs. Hudson's flat, doing something, Sherlock wasn't sure. Inside of him, everything was twisting; he knew where Moriarty was hiding Molly. She'd been in Cardiff the entire time, right under his (and the police's) nose. He thought that maybe he should call Lestrade, but he didn't want to waste time dallying, waiting for the DI to arrive. Sherlock made a short trek up to John's bedroom and pulled open the bedside drawer where he knew his friend kept his gun. It was heavy in his hand, the metal cool, and Sherlock slipped the magazine out to make sure it was loaded.

Outside on the sidewalk, Sherlock paused. _How to get there? _He couldn't take a cab, he didn't want to wait for Lestrade, and so the only logical solution was obvious.

The window of the late-model black car gave easily under the butt of the gun, and Sherlock quickly unlocked the door and slipped inside. Nimble fingers had it hot-wired within minutes, and Sherlock wondered what kind of fool parked their car on the street without having any type of security alarm.

**..**

He made the now-familiar drive to Cardiff faster than ever, not sparing a thought as to what would happen if he were pulled over for speeding in a stolen car. His recall of the layout of Cardiff was nearly as perfect as his knowledge of the streets of London, and he found the factory without error. Sherlock's heart thrummed wildly in his chest, and he could practically _feel _the adrenaline surging through his body, fueling him to go faster and faster as he abandoned the car after sending a short text to Lestrade and then slammed through the heavy metal door into the darkened factory.

The air was thick and rancid with old motor oil, human filth and the light, but distinct, undertone of blood. Slipping the gun from his trouser pocket, Sherlock made his way across the dark factory floor without caution, toward an open door way on the opposite end of the room. Faint light shone from within, and he could hear a voice murmuring quietly.

What he saw when he pushed through the door would stay with him for the rest of his days, of that he had no doubt. On a filthy bed in the middle of the room lay Molly, illuminated by a circle of light from a bare bulb handing directly overhead. A man with a shock of red hair was bending over her, and from his vantage point, Sherlock could see the handle of a knife gripped in the man's hand. Molly let out a tiny sound of pain as the man finished ripping a dirty shirt from her body, continuing to speak lowly. Sherlock's hand tightened on the grip of the gun fiercely, white-knuckle tight as the man dipped his fingers in Molly's blood and touched her bare breasts.

Without blinking, Sherlock raised his gun, and fired.

**..**

Rule received a message on the mobile he always carried in the pocket of his trousers. Molly shifted on the bed, the rope that bound her digging into her already raw flesh. The cotton fabric of the gray t-shirt that covered her was almost too much for her battered body. She'd refused to allow herself to catalog her injuries, even if it would have been one way to pass the time. Molly knew that if she let herself, the hopelessness that she'd been fighting tooth and nail against would probably win at last. She watched him pull the mobile from his pocket, and her stomach twisted along with his lips as he delighted in whatever he saw on the screen.

"Would ya look at that," Rule said with his rasping lisp as he slipped the phone back to its place. "Your boyfriend actually seems to be close to finding you. Mr. Moriarty wants me to leave him a little present. Bad news for you, that."

_Oh God_, Molly thought as Rule stood from his chair and moved out of her line of sight. _He's going to kill me_. She certainly knew that it was the likely ending for this scenario, but as Molly heard the cling and clatter of Rule messing with things she didn't want to think about, she realized that she'd still been holding out hope that Sherlock would rescue her. She'd been a fool. There was no way, even if Sherlock did find her, and according to Rule, he was close, that they would just simply let her go.

Tears slipped down Molly's cheeks, and she was surprised that she had any left to cry. Rule moved back into her sight, metal glinting in his hand, and Molly thought of her mother, grandmother, sister, her nieces; Sherlock, John, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson. Faces flashed through her mind, remembering some of the best of times, and Molly thought of her morgue, the quiet of her lab with its whirring machines and noxious chemicals. She wondered if this was normal. If everyone who knew that they were about to be tortured to death by a sadistic maniac spend their last lucid moments trying to relive as much as they could.

Molly flinched when Rule's rough fingers pinched her chin, and forced her head back. The cold metal of the knife, she now recognized it as the long one with the serrated blade, his favorite, bit into her collarbone, drawing a pebble of blood. This pain was nothing. The small burn of the sharp edge digging into her skin was a mere paper cut compared to what was to come. Molly's neck arched as he shoved her face further back, bruised and swollen muscles protesting from where he'd last choked her. She felt it when the blade moved down her flesh and sliced through the neck band of her t-shirt and easily bisected the material.

Rule released his bruising grip on her chin and grabbed the two halves of the shirt, peeling them back. Molly bit down on her tongue when he tugged roughly; pulling the cotton away from where it'd attached itself to her skin with dried blood. A few of her wounds reopened with his manhandling, and Molly couldn't hold back a tiny squeak of pain.

"I'll tell ya, girlie," Rule was saying, dipping his fingers into the blood of reawakened old wounds, "I'm gonna miss you." He used his fingertips to paint over first one nipple, then the other, and Molly began to force herself to shut down. "You've been real nice to play with. Real nice."

Molly blinked through tear blurred eyes up at his pitted face, bent low over her body as he concentrated. He opened his mouth to say more, but just as he did Molly noticed, funnily enough, that most of his face was gone.

Something warm sprayed over her, and Rule, faceless Rule, began to slump forward, until he fell heavily on top of her. Molly's mind began to come back little by little, and she registered the fact that Rule's brain seemed to be leaking from where his face once was. Then she realized that the warmth that was now coating her was his blood. Molly struggled to come back into herself, away from the place she learned to force herself to go. It seemed like hours, his weight pressing down on her before it was ripped away by someone she couldn't see, but it couldn't have been more than a few seconds.

Her mind hadn't even begun to register the word _rescue_ before he moved into her line of sight, slipping his gun back into his jacket pocket. She wouldn't let herself believe, _couldn't_, that he'd found her. She was hallucinating. This long holding on, and Molly's mind had finally snapped.

Sherlock- _notrealSherlock_ - lifted the knife from Rule's body, and then her hands were free. Molly was impressed with how real her delusions felt as her hands fell slack to her sides for the first time in weeks. Sherlock- _notrealSherlock_ - was kneeling on the bed, dirty mattress dipping, brushing hair back from her filthy face.

"Molly?" Sherlock's -_notREALSherlock_ -voice was panicked, sharp eyes searching her face. "Molly, are you alright?"

Molly's voice was hoarse and raw. "That, you wonderful delusion, is a very stupid question."

Sherlock's hands -_not... real... Sherlock?_- cupped her face, careful not to touch her anywhere else. "I'm not a delusion. An ambulance is on its way. I'll have you out of here soon."

"No," Molly moaned, leaning into his hands. "You can't be real. You _can't_."

"I assure you that I am." He was stroking her face now, and she didn't have it in her to tell him that it hurt. His hands were sliding slick against her face, and she could feel Rule's blood wet against her skin.

"Real?"

Sherlock -_real Sherlock?_- nodded.

"Rule's really dead?"

He nodded again. "Yes."

And Molly's silent tears turned to big, shuddering gasps that tore at her abused body. She felt the flooding of relief through her body, so strong that it nearly made her heave. With the feeling of relief, though, came other feelings, and it felt as though her entire body was on fire with pain.

"Oh, God, S-sherlock, it-it hurts. F-fucking hell."

"I know, I know," he was mumbling, his fingertips still running across her face, as if he couldn't bring himself to let go.

"N-no. I really d-don't think you do." Tears and snot dripped down her face, cutting tracks through dirt and blood.

"More help is on the way. They'll be here any second."

Molly attempted to nod, but found that she couldn't. Her eyes drifted shut, as her body succumbed to the pain, and the last thing she remembered was Sherlock's spidery fingers tracing patterns on her face.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: Let us all stop and take a deep breath: in through the nose, out through the mouth. Better? Yes, better. I hope that this chapter didn't disappoint in any way. The last thing I wanted was for this to be a let-down, or to fall flat. <strong>

**Thanks to coloradoandcolorado1, BeatnikFreak, Murmeltierchen, shercastle, JaspersMum, SEEKER-2000 (your review made me lmao- knew I liked you for a reason.), katdemon18, Dizzybunny, somethinginthewayful, Mrs. Max McDowell, fukyuu77, scarletwonder, eccentricpetal, carrisa, Genstarssmallpot92, theuniqueartistictype, Featherbrained and PurpleYin for the reviews! I'll get to working on that outtake tomorrow. I'll post it to my profile, so if you'd like to get an email alert for it, add me to your author alerts, or just keep an eye out in the archives. **

**We're nearing the light at the end of the tunnel, folks, and the second half of this fic, so leave a review if you, like me, are relieved and looking forward to the chapters ahead. **


	12. Chapter 12

_**(Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Sherlock. No copyright infringement intended.)**_

_****_**_Teeth in the Grass_**

**_Twelve_**

**.._  
><em>**

The beeping of that stupid machine was going to drive her mad. _Beep beep beep, _constant, ringing through her head, monitoring her heart. Molly shifted in her hospital bed, sweating under the layers of blankets, staring up at the ceiling. Every move sent pain shooting through her body; despite the liberal amounts of narcotics she was being given. An I.V. was hooked up to her left arm, various other diodes and monitors attached to the rest of her.

Being a doctor herself, Molly had understood perfectly when they'd described her injuries to her. Her left knee was shattered, there was severe damage to her right eye socket. She had two broken ribs, various cuts- some deep, some shallow- and contusions; least importantly, bruising over about seventy percent of her body.

And no one could forget the missing left little toe. So much for balance.

Molly was fairly certain that there wasn't an inch of her that didn't hurt.

Her mother and grandmother had been in and out, John and Lestrade as well, and her sister had been in twice since she'd been moved here from critical care four days ago. Six days since Sherlock had saved her. She hadn't seen his face since.

He was always at the hospital, and according to John, they found it nearly impossible to get him to leave. Both he and Lestrade told her that mostly he would sit into the visitor's room, sometimes directly outside her door, and other times he'd just roam the hospital, but he was always there, somewhere. He hadn't come into her room, though, not once.

John told her not to take it personally, that Sherlock had been out of his mind with worry while she was gone, running himself to the ends of his limits to get her back. She believed him. The fact that he was _at _the hospital lessened the sting considerably.

She'd had a surprise visit from Sherlock's brother, Mycroft Holmes, the day before. He'd let her know that he was using all of his far-reaching resources to apprehend Moriarty. When Molly, rather nonplussed by the man, had asked just _how _far-reaching his resources were, he'd just smirked at her, straightened his suit jacket, and left the room.

A few days before, it had finally hit her that it was over. That she'd survived. She'd been nearly certain that she would never see the outside of that room, never leave that bed. But she had. She was _alive. _Poor Detective Inspector Lestrade had been the one with her at the time, technically on official business, taking her statement for his report. He'd been sitting in a chair next to her bed, and she'd been telling him, as best she could, what she'd gone through, tied up in that cold, damp room. When Molly had broken down in tears, mentally reliving the worst experience of her life- the first time she'd been under Rule's knife- the poor man had been at an utter loss of what to do. He'd pulled his chair closer to her bed, and patted the air around her arm awkwardly, until her tears had subsided into relieved hiccups. Shortly after, a nurse had come in to give her another boost of morphine, and she'd promptly passed out, finishing her statement the next day.

Now, her door opened, and her doctor walked in. Molly had to bite back a groan. Her doctor was, quite frankly, a pompous ass. In his early forties with a clearly fake tan and blindingly white teeth. He was constantly condescending, and Molly wasn't sure how much more she could take before she snapped.

Dr. Miller glanced down at her chart, then flashed her a mouth full of white-caps. "Ah, Miss Hooper. How are we today?"

Molly grit her teeth together. _It's Doctor Hooper, you bastard. _"Well," she said, her voice barely raw now. "I dunno _doctor. _I kind of feel like I've been tortured."

Dr. Miller chuckled absently. "Yes, good one." He made a few notes on her chart, read a few more things. "Well, it looks like whatever you'd been ingesting maintained your caloric and nutrition intake nicely, and it doesn't seem like you're really any worse for the wear." Another fake smile and he raked the fingers of one hand through carefully mussed brown hair. _Dear Lord, is that a pinky ring? Is he still talking? _"You've lost a few pounds, but that can't hurt, eh?"

Molly blanched, and the doctor chuckled like he'd made a funny little joke.

"Get the fuck out of my hospital room," she heard herself saying. Apparently, her tongue had decided that she'd had enough, without firstly consulting her brain. Turns out, her brain completely concurred.

"Excuse me?" he said, fake smile still plastered across his face. "I don't think I caught that, Miss Hooper."

"It's _Doctor _Hooper!" she burst out. The smile dropped from his face completely. "And I _said, _get the _fuck out of my hospital room!"_

He slid her chart back into the bracket at the end of the bed. "I must ask you to calm down," he said to her, frowning.

"I will as soon as you march your pretentious _ass _out of my room!"

"Miss Hooper, calm _down _before I'm forced to sedate you!"

"I'd like to see you try, you over-blown, -" Molly's colorful retort was cut short when her door burst open and Sherlock strode in, followed by Molly's day-time nurse.

"What in the hell is going on in here?" Sherlock asked, looking positively murderous.

Molly pushed passed her shock at seeing him, and spoke to the nurse. "I want this pompous _asshole _out of my room. I'm firing him as my doctor!"

"Miss-" the nurse began.

"_Stop calling me Miss!_" Molly's rage was rocketing off the charts. She'd had enough of this goddamn hospital.

"I think you'd better listen to her," Sherlock said, staring down at Molly. She hadn't noticed he'd moved to her bedside. He looked at Dr. Miller. "Leave now."

Something in Sherlock's look had the doctor scampering out the door. "You too," he said to the nurse. Molly relaxed in the bed after the door closed behind the nurse, and she looked to Sherlock and found him staring at her again. She cleared her throat nervously.

"Thanks," she said, feeling her pulse pick up at his close proximity. Her heart was pounding with joy that he was here, while her head and her pain were screaming that all of this was his fault. Molly looked away, swallowing thickly.

"What will you do for a doctor now?" Sherlock asked, and she heard him take the chair next to her bed.

"I'll treat myself," Molly said stubbornly, chewing on her cracked bottom lip. She hated that her insides were in riot, unable to relax with him next to her, where she'd been completely comfortable just a few short weeks before.

"I highly doubt they'll let you do that, Molly."

"Then I'll call John," she answered.

"What did he do, the doctor? What did he say?"

Molly let out a bitter little laugh. "That I seemed no worse for the wear. Then he basically implied that I was fat."

"No worse for the-?" Sherlock stopped and clenched his jaw.

"Yeah. Look just like a basket of roses, don't I?" she said, gesturing to her swollen, bandaged eye.

"You're beautiful," Sherlock said quietly, and Molly looked at him sharply. His eyes were fixed on his knees, and he was shifting in the chair, clearly uncomfortable. Sherlock cleared his throat and stood. "Well, I should go. I'll tell John that you need to see him." He moved toward the door.

Her "thank you," was swallowed by the click as the door swung shut.

**..**

As the faux wooden hospital door closed behind him, Sherlock took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to calm the pounding in his chest. He shook his head to dislodge the instinct to run back into the room, climb into Molly's hospital bed and hold her until she was completely healed, and even beyond that. But she needed to recuperate, and he was holding himself personally responsible to ensure that nothing, or no one, stood in the way of that, not even himself. Sherlock moved further down the corridor and pulled his mobile from his pocket, sending a text to John.

_Come to the hospital immediately, Molly needs you. –SH_

He slipped the phone back into his pocket, and leaned back against the gray stretch of wall. A few moments later, a buzzing in his pocket told him that John had replied.

_Why, what's happened? Is there an emergency? –JW_

_No, she needs you to be her attending. Working out ways now to get her other doctor fired. Possibly assassinated. –SH_

_I have no authority at that hospital, they're not going to let me just waltz in and start treating patients! –JW_

_Taking care of it. –SH_

Sherlock scrolled down his decidedly short contact list, and hit the tiny green button, bringing the phone to his ear with only the smallest sneer upon his face. It was all he could do not to grimace as his brother answered.

"_What is it, Sherlock? What have you done now?"_

"I haven't done anything. I need a… favor." It was a measure of just how much Molly meant to him if he was willing to ask his _brother _for favors on her behalf. Silence on the other end showed just how surprised Mycroft was as well. Without waiting for what was sure to be a sickeningly smug reply, Sherlock continued. "John needs to have proper clearance to treat Molly, and Dr. Miller needs to be fired. Immediately."

"So this has to do with the girl."

"Molly, Mycroft. Her name is Molly."

"Yes, I am aware. And have you been in to see her yet?"

Sherlock hesitated. "Briefly."

Mycroft's sigh was audible. "Sherlock-"

"The last think I need, Mycroft, is another one of your _how not to be a social leper _talks. I'm dealing with this myself."

"You're going about it the wrong-"

"Will you just do as I asked?" Another hesitation. "Please?"

"Dear Lord, I must mark this on my calendar. Consider it, most of it, done."

Sherlock hung up without any further ado, and moved back down the hospital corridor to Molly's room. Inside, he could hear the reassuring beep of the heart monitor, and the steady rhythm of her breathing, telling him that she was indeed still there and alive. He'd saved her. Sherlock knew that he should be in there, sitting vigilantly by her bed, even possibly holding her hand. He knew that he should be supportive, but he also knew that if it were _him _the last thing that he'd want was some _lovesick _person hovering around his bedside, delaying his recuperation. The wall was smooth and cold against his back as he leaned against it, shoving his hands in his pockets, waiting for John to arrive.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: I know it's not the heart wrenching, Sherlock never leaves her side reunion most of you were hoping for, but I just couldn't feel that. As it is, I'm not entirely happy with the way this turned out either. But this felt the <strong>_**closest **_**to being right, so I'm going to grimace, close my eyes and go with it. Hope it's not disappointing. We're coming into the second half of the story now, Molly's recuperation and on ward, and I'm decidedly nervous. Really nervous. I actually think I might throw up. Urg. **

**Thanks to Petra Todd, booda77, SEEKER-2000, Hellscrimsonangel, mhoopers, somethinginthewayful, katdemon18, Mrs. Dizzy, theuniqueartistictype, Mionie W. G., windowbird, Vitawash, Murmeltierchin, dizzybunny, barus, eccentricpetal, coloradoandcolorado1, BeatnikFreak, Amalia Kensington, SurrealRealism, ThisLooksLikeAJobForMe, jedwarding, Juze, and PurpleYin for reviewing chapter eleven!**

**Leave me a review, let me know if you liked it, hated it, whatever you thought of it. Next chapter up on Friday. **

**Oh! And I also posted the outtake I promised in chapter ten. It's on my profile: **_**Sinning Hands. **_


	13. Chapter 13

_**(Disclaimer: I own nothing related to **__**Sherlock**__**. No copyright infringement intended. **_

_**Author's Note: No Sherlock view point here, all Molly. We also cover quite a bit of time in this chapter as well.)**_

_**Teeth in the Grass**_

_**Thirteen**_

**..**

John had come in later that same day and agreed to be her attending for the duration of her recuperation. Molly wanted to talk to him about Sherlock- who would know better than John Watson? - but she'd remained mute on the subject. She wasn't sure what her own feelings were concerning the matter, and Molly thought that she should get herself squared away before she faced the problem of the cantankerous detective.

It was now three weeks later, and John was there, testing her vision and depth perception. She'd undergone surgery to repair the damage done to her eye socket, and so far, everything seemed to have come out the way it should've. In the past weeks, John had seen parts of Molly that he was never supposed to have seen, but she felt marginally more comfortable with him as her doctor than she had anyone else. She knew and trusted John. She knew that he wouldn't treat her as just a number in a row of endless others, and if she lost it on occasion, and broke down crying, that was alright, because he was her friend.

"You seem to be healing marvelously, Molly," John was saying to her as he fixed the gauze patch back over her eye. He moved across the room and turned the lights back up, as the damaged eye was light sensitive after the surgery and would be for some time to come. John came back to her bedside, and shifted her blankets, allowing himself room to examine her knee, which was encased completely. "This knee, though. After your surgery, you'll still be stuck in this monster brace for a while, but we'll be able to get you into a more flexible one before too long."

Molly nodded, sucking in a breath as he poked and prodded at her as gently as he could. "How long d'you think I'll have to be in physical therapy?" she asked.

"No way to tell. Could be a few months, could be a few years." John was bent over a set of stitches on her stomach, her flimsy hospital gown pulled up to just under her breasts, blanket protecting her modesty. He smoothed the bandage back into place. "Your knee was practically shattered, Molly."

"Yeah, nasty buggers, those hammers," Molly let slip out. John froze and she gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. She wasn't sure if it was the pain medication, or her fragile state of mind, but Molly was having trouble controlling her verbal filter. She blew out a breath. "I'm sorry, John."

John smoothed her gown back over her, and sat on the edge of her bed. "No, I'm sorry."

Molly's brow wrinkled with confusion. "Why on earth are you sorry?"

"Because this is our fault. We were supposed to protect you." John's voice was thick. His jaw was squared, and he wasn't looking at her.

Molly opened her mouth to protest, but John cut her off. "Don't say any different. It's true. You wouldn't be in this situation in the first place, if it weren't for me and Sherlock."

She couldn't argue with him, though she wanted to. Still a bleeding heart, she wanted to take the blame off them, tell John it wasn't his fault that Moriarty was a psychopath who ran around with sadistic henchmen. She wanted to tell him that it wasn't his fault that she'd been stupid enough to think that _Jim from IT _had actually been interested in her all those months ago, or that she and Sherlock had become lovers. Molly felt horrible that these words wouldn't come. She couldn't force them passed her lips to console her friend. So, instead, she sat up as best she could, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and rested her head on his chest. John's arms came around her, and they sat like that for a long time.

**..**

It was a Monday, two weeks later, when Molly was released from the hospital. It was now early July and the sky was a clear blue as she was wheeled out of the hospital's front entrance doors by John and to her mother's waiting car. Molly refused to return to Cardiff, to live with her mother for her recuperation, and also refused to let her mother move into her flat to take care of her. This had her mother in a fair tizzy for several days, before finally insisting that she at least be allowed to drive her daughter home from the hospital.

It would have been impossible for Molly to navigate the stairs to her basement flat at 221 Baker St., so Mrs. Hudson had cleared out the apartment on the ground floor, which she'd previously used for storage. John, Lestrade, and to Molly's amusement, Sherlock, had packed and moved her things into 221A before she'd been released, and she shuddered to think what the state of the place would be.

John helped Molly into the backseat of the late-model Lexus, a pair of sunglasses protecting her eyes, and closed the door firmly behind her before getting into the front seat himself. Most of her stitches had been removed, and she no longer had to wear the eye patch, but healing eye was still extremely light sensitive. Molly's left leg was still immovably ensconced in the giant brace, which made sitting in the back of the car uncomfortable. Her surgery was scheduled for the next week, but John assured her that it was completely fine for her to go home. It would be an outpatient affair, done in just a few hours, he said. She wouldn't be able to go back to work for a long while yet, but she'd been assured that her position at St. Bart's was secured.

They managed a space in front of Speedy's, and with John's help, maneuvered into 221 Baker St. They hobbled into flat A and Molly blanched at the boxes sitting everywhere. Granted it was a much nicer place than the one she'd occupied previously. The walls in the sitting room were papered with the same Victorian print as Sherlock and John's flat, and it was actually a decent size. The kitchen was about the same layout as the basement flat, but the bedroom was twice the size, and Molly thought that when all this was over, Mrs. Hudson would have to drag her cold, dead body out of this apartment; because that was the only way she was going to give it up.

Her mother hadn't come inside with them, and she was probably now on her way back to Cardiff, grumbling about ungrateful daughters who didn't have the decency to produce grandchildren by the age of thirty. John had helped her onto her sofa, and came back moments later, pushing a wheelchair in front of him. Molly glared at it, and John parked it on the other side of the room, shaking his head at her.

"You've got to use it, Molly," he said, in his best I'm-the-doctor-you're-the-patient voice.

"I don't want to," she said stubbornly, crossing her arms over her chest, knowing very well that she was acting like a child. She didn't care. She was beginning to develop a pounding headache and she knew that it was the lack of morphine, which they'd refused to let her bring home, and she was already over tired just from the short trip from the hospital.

"Tough luck," John said. "Your surgery's next week, and you're stuck in this thing until at least six weeks after. Just think of that nice, bendy brace and cane you'll get to use after as a light at the end of the tunnel."

Molly huffed, pushed her hair out of her face from where it had fallen from the sloppy up-do she'd given herself, and glared at her friend. "Fine. Push the damn thing over here."

John smiled at her and did as she asked, parking it in front of the sofa facing her. "Do you want help getting in?" he asked.

"No. I just want to sit here for a while."

"Alright then. Just yell up the stairs if you need anything. You know... help, or anything else."

"I'll manage," she told him, closing her eyes and relaxing back into her sofa. She heard John moving toward the door. "Thank you," she said, not opening her eyes. John didn't reply and she heard the door click shut a few moments later.

Molly sat there in the quiet, listening to the hum of the refrigerator, trying to ignore the pain in her leg and the dull throbbing in her skull. She had her enormous purple tote sitting on her lap, and she dug around, pulling out the prescription-strength Tylenol John had prescribed her. Molly shook two out of the orange plastic bottle and looked around, realizing she had nothing to take them with. She swiveled her eyes in the direction of the kitchen, but it seemed like a long ways away, and John had just gone upstairs, so she knocked the white pills back dry, one at a time.

She looked around at the packed boxes littering the sitting room, the wheelchair that seemed to mock her, and down at her leg, sticking out involuntarily straight in its dark blue brace. It was almost too much. Molly felt herself nearly going under, not sure if she could handle what was in store for her. Surgery, physical therapy, most likely psychological therapy, dealing with Sherlock. And on top of everything, she had to settle into a new place.

Instead of letting herself go under, Molly decided to take a nap, and face everything later.

**..**

When she woke, it was full night. Her muscles were stiff from lying awkwardly on the couch, and she had to pee. Molly felt rather like a turtle on its back as she tried to wiggle into an upright position. She eyed the wheelchair in front of her with distaste, mentally calculating the effort it would take to lift herself into it. Then she weighed the effort against the embarrassment of calling John down here to help her.

In the end, her dignity won out. It took a little while, much grumbling, and two near-falls, but she got herself into the chair and managed to wheel herself to the bathroom, maneuvering around boxes with her braced leg protruding out in front of her. When it came to levering herself from the chair to the toilet, well, that took much more effort, but Molly eventually got the business done and managed to wedge herself back onto the sofa. The pain medication had granted her a few hours of blissful, dreamless sleep, but Molly found her mind too flooded now to relax.

Her new flat was quiet and dark, shadowed stacks of boxes loomed everywhere, like small mountains of responsibility that she wanted to ignore forever. Molly wondered what she was supposed to do now. Just move on? Settle into her new flat, go back to work when she was able, and continue a sexually satisfying but emotionally deprived relationship? Somehow, she didn't think that it was going to happen. Not now, not after everything she'd been through. Molly thought that this might be normal, that survivors of unlikely situations were supposed to feel like this, were supposed to looking back on their lives _before _and find them lacking.

Molly's problem was that she'd found her life mostly lacking _before _anyway, but she'd been able to cope with it. She felt that she couldn't do that now. Something had been irrevocably changed inside of her. Not that it mattered much right at the moment. She was stuck at involuntary idle while her body healed.

Molly twisted on the sofa, lifting her immobile leg up to stretch out with the other, and lay back. The summer night was warm enough that she was comfortable enough in her cotton shorts and t-shirt, and Molly wished that she could open the windows and let the sweet air into the flat, but the effort was too much, and she was in the city anyway, she reminded herself. The sweet air would probably just smell of over-heated rubbish waiting to be picked up. Letting out a sigh at the depressing thought, Molly reached for her bag that lay on the floor beside the sofa. Again, she dug out the bottle of pain pills and turned the orange plastic between her fingers, wondering if she should take another dose. Her pain, at the moment, was minimal, but she wanted to sleep. The traumatized woman in her told her to take as many as she needed; the doctor reminded her how easy it was to form a habit to this particular kind of narcotic.

The doctor won and she shoved the bottle back into her bag, then set the bag back on the floor. She didn't need pills to sleep, not really. She was just afraid of what would happen if she let her mind relax without them. What she'd gone through was as nightmare-inducing as things came, and this would be the first non-drug induced sleep she'd had since her rescue. Molly scowled at herself. _Stop it, _she told herself. _You're not a stupid mouse._

Forcing herself to relax, it didn't take long for her body to succumb.

**..**

_Molly blinked. Her eyes focused on the bare bulb dangling above her, and she felt the bite of the rope digging into her skin._

Oh God, oh God,_ she thought. _No, I was out. Please, no.

_A clang from somewhere to her right, and Molly's entire body jerked with fright. Sobs clawed their way out of her as she looked in that direction, waiting for Rule. When he stepped out into the circle of light, a disbelieving gasp tore through her. It wasn't Rule, standing there, with a long, wicked knife. It wasn't Rule that leered at her naked body, corners of his mouth curling up. It wasn't him, but dear God, it was so much worse._

_Sherlock moved closer to the bed, crystal eyes as sharp as the knife in his hand._

_He straddled her, knees on either side, dipping into the dirty mattress. Leaning down into her, like he had so many times before, lips against the shell of her ear._

"_Are you ready to play?" he asked, but when he spoke, it wasn't his own deep cadence. It was a familiar rasping lisp that was horribly wrong coming from her lover. "The game, my dear Molly, is on."_

_She couldn't hold in her scream, and he answered with a harsh chuckle. He sat back, still astride her, pressing her down, but the knife was gone. Instead, he wrapped his hands around her throat. Her body flopped back and forth as he throttled her, that deep worried crease between his brows._

"_Molly?" his voice was his own again, and he was looking at her like he couldn't believe she was laying under him, that it was her throat his slender fingers were wrapped around. "Molly!" _

"Molly!"

She came awake suddenly, her body still shaking, strong hands gripping her shoulders. Breath wouldn't go to her lungs, and her throat was still tight as if Sherlock's hands were still squeezing it. When she saw him hovering above her, eyes now filled with worry, in her still half-unaware state, she couldn't help but lash out. Molly's fist connected with Sherlock's nose, and he flailed back away from her.

Molly grappled at her own chest, still unable to suck in a breath. She felt hands cup her face, and she struck out again, but Sherlock dodged her attack and pulled her body upright and flush against his.

"Take a breath, Molly," he said into her ear. His hands were stroking through her hair and down her back, a soothing rhythm that melted her muscles. "Just breathe. You had a nightmare."

Sweet oxygen finally rushed into her lungs and she slumped against him, hands fisting in the back of his shirt. Molly sat there gasping, the terror of her nightmare still crashing through her, making her body shake uncontrollably. She didn't even realize that she was crying until she felt his shirt grow wet under her cheek. Fear trembled electric through her, and she was partly horrified that she was clinging to the very man that'd starred in her nightmare.

But she couldn't let go. His black button up was caught in her death grip, and her face was pressed into his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. The calm rhythm of his breathing was soothing, as was the way he was still running his fingers through her long hair.

Molly's own breathing calmed, and her heart rate slowly dropped down to its normal pace. It was then that she felt something drip down to land in her hair, leaking through to her scalp. Molly pulled back and blanched when she saw the blood slowly seeping from Sherlock's rapidly swelling nose.

"Oh, Jesus, Sherlock..."

"Quite alright," he answered, trying to stem the blood flow with his sleeve.

"I would offer you something but," Molly gestured around to her packed apartment, "I've no clue where anything is."

"I'll have John look at it in a moment," he assured her. "You should go back to sleep."

"No!" It came out more forceful than Molly'd meant it to, and Sherlock looked at her surprised. "No, I don't think I can sleep anymore."

Sherlock looked distinctly comfortable before speaking. "Do you want help? You know, getting into your..." he glanced to the wheelchair.

"That's alright. Go have John look at your nose."

The air turned awkward, neither looking at the other, before Sherlock finally nodded tersely and swept from the apartment.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: I've had this chapter written for <strong>_**ages**_**. Since before I posted the story. Happy to finally get it out. Sorry for the lack of Sherlock-view this chapter, but it'll be back in the next. We needed some quality time with poor Molly. **

**I'm going to be scaling updates back to once a week, as I have a few other projects that I'm working on. I was threatened with physical violence by a very dear friend to send a submission into the Save Undershaw short story thing (she said that if I didn't enter, she'd hit me *rolls eyes* Love ya, Tiff!), so I'll be working on that. Though this story is, and will be until it's over, my first priority. **

**Thanks to Petra Todd, LilBookworm89, coloradoandcolorado1, MelodyHolmes, somethinginthewayful, Dizzybunny, katdemon18, Amalia Kensington, JaspersMum, Evie-Marie87, Mrs Dizzy, Murmeltierchen, darrah, BeatnikFreak, darkryubaby and ThisLooksLikeAJobForMe for reviewing chapter twelve. **

**Leave me a review, fuel my addiction to this fandom while I go and clean and sing along loudly (badly) to the Sweeny Todd soundtrack. I've had entirely too much coffee today. Next chapter up next Wednesday! **

**Mrs. Monster**


	14. Chapter 14

_**(Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Sherlock. No copyright infringement intended.)**_

_**Teeth in the Grass**_

_**Fourteen**_

**..**

Sherlock returned the next day with a bandage over his obviously broken nose and a small brown box under his arm.

Molly was sitting in the hated wheelchair, surrounded by boxes of books that John had stacked to a height she could comfortably reach. She stacked them two at a time onto the shelves of her bookcase that she could reach, in the order that she liked; by genre rather than by author or alphabetically.

She looked up as he entered, and then to the box, which she noticed was moving slightly.

"If that's more snakes, I'm going to kill you."

A smile crept to his face before it disappeared as quickly as it came. "No." He dropped the box into her lap. "I... got that. For you."

Molly could feel something moving inside the small cardboard box. There were several holes poked into the lid, and she lifted it off with no little trepidation. What she saw inside nearly made her heart melt.

A small grey and white spotted kitten was nestled inside, shifting from paw to paw. At the sudden light, it looked up, straight at Molly with enormous blue eyes. Molly reached inside and picked the kitten up, and the box was removed from her lap. It was then she remembered the argument she and Sherlock had had _before_, and she looked up to see him shifting uncomfortably, looking anywhere but at her.

Just as she opened her mouth to say... something, she wasn't sure what, he cut across her.

"No, no. You're doing it all wrong." He was staring at the books she'd put away.

Molly smiled a little and brought the kitten to her chest, snuggling into its soft fur. "Is that so?"

"Yes, it's a complete mess. Utter disaster."

"Maybe you should fix it then."

"I'm obviously going to have to."

When Sherlock left an hour later, Molly's bookshelves were filled, every book she possessed shelved neatly in alphabetical order.

**..**

John came through the door not two hours after Sherlock left. Molly was stretched out as best she could get on her sofa, having just folded and put away most of her clothing that didn't require hanging. There were still mountains of things all over the flat, but Molly felt that she'd made decent progress for the day.

Her new kitten was curled up on her stomach, and Molly was reading a completely mindless book. She looked up when John rapped lightly on the open door frame and walked in, a white bakery box in his hands.

"Hello, John." Molly folded down a corner of her page and set the book on the ground.

"Molly. How-"

"If the rest of that question is 'are you', I'm going to set Martin on you." She scratched behind the sleeping kittens ears with her first finger.

"Martin?" John pulled one of her kitchen chairs from where it had been shoved into a corner of the sitting room.

"My new little friend. I've named him Martin."

John sat, resting the white box on his knees, eyeing the kitten. Secretly, John loved cats, especially kittens, and was resisting a very real impulse to cuddle the thing to death at that moment. "And where did he come from?"

"Sherlock brought him over earlier."

"I'm sorry- did you say you got him from Sherlock?"

Molly nodded, and John scowled.

"Sherlock's allergic to cats," John told her. "He made me give up the one I'd gotten from a rescue shelter because his eyes wouldn't stop watering, and he sneezed seven times in a row."

"You're joking." Molly pushed up on her elbows, hair falling into her face.

"Not in the slightest. It was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen."

Molly looked down at Martin, who was sleeping peacefully, purring with every tiny exhale. "Huh."

"Yeah, it's odd, isn't it?"

She pushed her hair out of her face, and struggled between lying back down, or sitting and waking Martin in the process. In the end, the kitten won, and Molly collapsed back onto the sofa.

"So what've you got there?" she asked John, looking at the bakery box in his lap.

"Oh! I stopped in at Tesco on my way home, and they had this." He opened the box and showed Molly a single layer birthday cake, with lots of gunky white and blue icing. It had _Happy Birthday Stan! _written in bright blue icing surrounded by sugary flowers. "I guess Stan didn't need a birthday cake after all, or he had a very sad birthday with no cake. Either way, our gain."

Molly smiled at him, and John carried it into the kitchen, sliding it into the fridge.

"So Sherlock told me you had a nightmare last night," he said once he'd situated himself back into his chair.

Molly felt her good mood fall away, and she nodded, shuddering as she remembered.

"And you broke his nose."

She winced, thinking of Sherlock's bruised face when he'd stopped in earlier. "Yeah."

"You want to talk about it?"

"Are you asking as my doctor, or as my friend?" Molly asked, tilting her head back and covering her eyes.

"Both."

"It was... horrible. I dreamt that I was back there-"

"Which is completely normal."

"-but it wasn't Rule there torturing me. It was Sherlock. But-but he had Rule's voice." Molly dug the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to grind the images from her mind. "And then Sherlock woke me up, and he was there, and I just... God. I can't believe I punched him." Molly felt John touch the back of her hand, then gently pull them both away from her face.

"Stop that. Your eye's still damaged." He was kneeling beside the sofa. "And I think everyone who's ever met Sherlock has wanted to punch him at one time or another."

The joke fell flat.

"Why would I dream that John? I don't understand."

"Because at some level, you blame him."

_Knew that already. _"It's not really his fault, though."

"No, it's not. But Molly, you've been through hell. A little misplaced blame is the least that could be expected."

"I know." Molly sighed, trying to blink away the sudden wetness in her eyes. It was just then that Martin woke, stretched, and crawled up Molly's stomach and chest to settle just under her chin. He curled up again, and promptly went back to sleep.

Neither Molly or John could hold in a small laugh at the sight, which served to break the somber pall that had settled over the visit.

**..**

Firmly ensconced in his chair with a load of tissues and a box of new allergy medication, Sherlock watched John come through the door of their flat, scowling at the slightly smug look on the doctor's face.

"Shut up," he mumbled, wiping at the corner of one eye with a tissue.

"I didn't say anything."

"No, but you were thinking about it. Do us both a favor and don't."

Sherlock's scowl grew deeper as John's grin widened.

"A kitten, Sherlock?"

"Shut up," he grumbled, sinking lower in the chair.

He hadn't been able to resist. After John had bandaged his nose the night before, he'd stepped out for a few minutes. Never too far away from 221, though, close enough to know if something happened. When Sherlock had seen the small box with _Free Kittens _scrawled on the side in black marker sitting in front of a block of flats a few streets away from Baker St., he'd thought it was empty at first. Then a tiny mewing had gotten his attention; normally, he would have continued on his way, but the small sound brought to mind the… _disagreement _that he'd gotten into with Molly the night she'd been kidnapped. The disagreement that had been entirely his fault.

If he hadn't overreacted, he would have stayed that entire night. Molly wouldn't have been left alone, and- Sherlock forced that train of thought to a halt, reminding himself that things like _guilt_, _blame_ and _regret _were useless.

Sherlock edged closer to the box, immediately feeling the reaction to the dander in the animal's fur in his throbbing nose, and the tiny kitten looked up at him with absurdly large eyes. It was done then, and Sherlock picked the box up and strode quickly back to Baker St. in order to inform Mrs. Hudson of the new pet.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: A shorter, lighter chapter. A break from the never-ending tunnel of darkness. Well, it<strong>_** does **_**end, but we needed a break. Named the kitten (obviously) after Martin Freeman, because as we all know, he's made up of kittens, jam, jumpers and RAGE. Ahem. **

**Also, lifelesslyndsey made art for this story. It's on my tumblr (which I also sometimes post teasers, and other assorted fanfic things). If you'd like to go and follow me, or just take a peek, my tumblr is deadbeatpillowcases (dot) tumblr (dot) com. I posted the art today, so it should be fairly close to the top under Sherlock Fanfic: Teeth in the Grass: Art.**

**Thank you, thank you to ThisLooksLikeAJobForMe, katdemon18, booda77, Juze, coloradoandcolorado1, Murmeltierchen, mhoopers, Dizzybunny, BeatnikFreak, Petra Todd, under. the. bridge. downtown, Yema, Mrs Dizzy, eccentricpetal, Hellscrimsonangel and lori (thanks for the big mass of reviews! Very much appreciated, but no I don't write professionally.) for reviewing chapter thirteen!**

**And I have a rec this week! Everyone needs to go and read The Lonely by coloradoandcolorado1. It's really quite fantastic, and well written, and it needs more love. Go nurture it. Off you pop.**

**New chapter next Wednesday.**


	15. Chapter 15

_**(I own nothing related to Sherlock. No copyright infringement intended.)**_

_**Teeth in the Grass**_

_**Fifteen**_

**..**

Molly couldn't bring herself to look at her bed. She wasn't sure if she would ever be able to work up to actually lying in it. As it were, the thing remained unassembled in a corner of her bedroom, pushed up flush against the wall. She spent her nights on her sofa; Martin curled up into a soft, warm ball on her stomach. The flat was dark around her, most of the boxes and bags unpacked over the past week with the help of John and Mrs. Hudson, and Molly lay on her sofa scratching behind Martin's ears, watching lights from the passing cars cast shadows on the ceiling.

"It wasn't _really _his fault, you know," she said to Martin, her voice carrying in the quiet of the building. It was going on three a.m. and John was long since asleep, as well as Mrs. Hudson. As for Sherlock, well, who knew, but he was being quiet about whatever it was he was up to.

"Jim was mental. It's not Sherlock's fault that lunatics are attracted to him." Molly had taken to talking to Martin in the night, when she couldn't sleep, or was too afraid to let herself try. "Well, I mean, _I'm _attracted to him, and I'm not a lunatic. Then again, I am talking to a cat. But you don't mind, do you Martin?" She looked down her body to the furry gray-and-white lump curled up on her stomach. He didn't so much as twitch. Molly sighed and laced her fingers together under her breasts.

Her body was quite comfortably numb at that moment, having just taken a few of her pain pills an hour before and the pain in her leg had lessened into a dull throb. She'd had her out-patient surgery two days ago, and the monster brace had been taken off, replaced with a much more flexible one. Physical therapy started on Monday, and Molly's body was already cringing over the oncoming strain, but she was more than ready to be up and around again.

"I suppose I should talk to him, then, shouldn't I? After all, he did give me you, even though he can't look at you without sneezing. Poor man. Next thing we know, he'll be blowing the place up, trying to cure his own allergies." She sighed again and shifted slightly, pulling the knitted throw blanket from the back of the couch, curling under it as best she could without jarring things too much.

"I do miss him terribly," she finally said, words sounding too loud in the quiet flat. Molly pulled the blanket up over Martin and under her chin, curling her small fists in the material, falling into a dreamless sleep a few moments later.

**..**

The floor was hard under him as Sherlock sat outside 221a, leaning back against the closed door. He sighed a bit and closed his eyes. _I do miss him terribly_, he'd heard her say. Sherlock missed her as well, and without the threat of her imminent doom hanging over him, he had nothing with which to deflect from that current predicament. He _missed _her. Sherlock wanted nothing more than for things to be back to the way they were, before she'd been taken. Solving crimes with John, coming back to Molly; no _feelings_, no _questions_.

Now, he had all of these things bouncing around in his mind, and he didn't know what to _do _with any of it. This frustrated him to no end; normally Sherlock had no qualms with opening his mouth and letting whatever crossed his mind spill out, regardless of how it would be received. Now, though, now… he was _nervous_. Sherlock scoffed at himself, the quiet sound bouncing around the carpeted foyer. Sherlock Homes, nervous; a ridiculous notion in and of itself. He'd faced death more times than could really be fathomed; he'd grown up dealing with _Mycroft_; he had even prevented a few of what would have been bloody, gruesome civil wars in a few small, remote countries with well timed deductions (at the request of former mentioned older brother). Yet here he was, practically shaking like a coward over talking about his _feelings _with a _woman_. There had to be a way to handle this, a source of information of which could compile data from. Or from _whom_ he could compile data from, more like.

Sherlock was up the few flights of stairs and into John's bedroom in just over a minute. Without hesitation, he leaped onto the foot of the bed, startling John into a sitting position, before the doctor groaned and lay back down. Sherlock sat on the foot of the bed, hands folded together in his lap, fingers twined.

"I need your help." Sherlock's voice carried in the dark bedroom, and John reopened his eyes slowly, sleep addled mind processing the statement.

John's head came a few inches off his pillow. "You-"

"You heard me perfectly," Sherlock cut across him, hands squeezing together, knuckles turning white-tight.

John scrubbed a hand down his tired face. "Let me guess," he said, propping himself on his elbows. "Molly?"

"Obviously. What else could I possibly need your help with?"

John just sighed, collapsing back onto his pillows. "Nothing at all, Sherlock. Now what is the problem?"

"I want things to be the way they were," Sherlock stated plainly.

"That," John told him, "is not going to happen. And I don't know why you'd want it to."

"Why wouldn't I want it to?"

"Because, you idiot, you obviously have feelings for her. Even if _she _could go back to the way it was between the two of you, you wouldn't be satisfied."

"Don't be ridiculous," Sherlock muttered, grasping the knees of his folded legs, pulling them up against his chest.

"I'm not."

If John had been watching, he would have seen a rare flash of vulnerability cross his friend's face. "I don't know what to do."

John sighed again, rolled over and pulled the covers around his shoulders. "Just talk to her, you berk."

Sherlock's brow furrowed. "That's your advice?"

"Yes, now get out of my bed."

**..**

Saturday morning was overcast and humid, and Molly was fairly miserable. The old building didn't have air conditioning and so they had to make do with strategically placed fans, which were not cutting it. Her long hair hung limp around her face, falling from the sloppy ponytail she'd scraped it into that morning. The floral tank top and jean shorts she was wearing seemed too much and sweat beaded under the white brace that encased her left knee.

She kept a small radio next to the coffee pot on her kitchen counter and she'd stuck in _The Black Keys._ The buzzing of the fan nearly drowned out they bluesy music as she stood at the counter making lunch, heavily favoring her right leg. Taking the paper plate and sandwich with her, Molly eased into the wheelchair that was directly behind her, and did an awkward one-handed wheel to the small red and chrome kitchen table.

Her mouth was full of half-masticated turkey sandwich when Sherlock strode into the kitchen, Martin at his heels. Molly could see the watery eyes from where she was sitting, and tried to swallow as fast as she could without choking. She hadn't seen much of Sherlock since they day he'd come to give her Martin, and reorganize (also known as helping her unpack without admitting to what he was doing, while being slightly insulting about it.). One hand was twiddling with something in his trouser pocket while the other hand was fiddling with one of the buttons on his pale blue shirt. Sherlock's mop of dark hair was clearly mussed and Molly watched him take the chair next to her, neither of them speaking.

Music played in the background, the fan osculated and Molly flicked the edge of the paper plate as Sherlock began muttering to himself under his breath, eyes under furrowed brows fixed on the table top. Molly had never seen Sherlock behave this way, and wasn't sure what approach she should take. Finally she just took another bite of her sandwich, watched him, and waited, chewing slowly.

She heard Sherlock mutter, _"Right," _before nodding once and extracting his hand from his pocket, which was closed into a tight fist.

He cleared his throat before speaking. "I was supposed to hand all of this in as evidence," he said, "but your mother told John how much this meant to you, so…" he trailed off as he opened his fist and let something fall from his palm to the table. With one finger, he pushed it toward her plate.

Molly set her sandwich down, wiped her palms on her shorts and reached for it just as Sherlock moved his hand. Her eyes flashed back up to his face to find him watching her, before she looked down at what she'd picked up.

Pressure build behind her eyes as she spoke. "This was evidence?" Molly brushed her thumb over the penny she held in her palm. The one she'd found with her father when she was just a girl. She could remember her sister being so jealous over those trips to London, but she'd been more their mother's girl, while Molly had been their father's.

Sherlock cleared his throat again. "Yes. It was one of the… clues Moriarty left for me."

Molly blinked away the wetness coating her eyes and curled her right hand around the penny. "Thank you," she whispered.

"Uh… think nothing of it," Sherlock said quickly, and stood from the table, chair legs screeching against the linoleum.

"Don't rush off again," Molly said, her voice quite small, looking up at him.

Sherlock hesitated before resuming his seat, sitting rigidly, palms flat on the table. Molly could tell that he was clearly uncomfortable, and reached over, touching the back of his right hand with her left.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: More fluff. Mostly. But donut worry, I won't be making this flip into all rainbows and sweet sunshine, there's more drama to come. Sorry this one is a day late, but my mojo is being a real bitch lately. And I <strong>_**really **_**love this fandom; the last chapter got the damn kitten aww heard 'round the world. Many of you thought that Martin was a Cabin Pressure reference, and I'll admit, I had to look that up. I'm a bad, bad fan. **

**Thanks to barus, SEEKER-2000, coloradoandcolorado1, Miggs, BeatnikFreak, fukyuu77, ThisLooksLikeAJobForMe, katdemon18, xxLxx, conchepcion, windowbird, Mrs. Max McDowell, Mrs Dizzy, Dizzybunny, PurpleYin, MissusGages, lori, Hellscrimsonangel and Adiba for reviewing chapter fourteen! **

**Give my mojo a kick in the ass and review, yeah? New chapter up next Wednesday! **


	16. Chapter 16

_**(Disclaimer: I own nothing related to **__**Sherlock**__**. No copyright infringement intended.)**_

_**Teeth in the Grass**_

_**Last Chapter and Worse**_

**..**

The sitting room was muggy and Molly was groggy as she slowly woke from an afternoon nap. That morning she'd had a session with her physical therapist, working at getting her out of the wheelchair and back on her feet. She was two weeks into it, and as far as she was concerned, things were going well in that respect. Her body was growing stronger, and her mind along with it. She pulled herself into a sitting position, something that was becoming easier and easier, and looked around her sitting room. She'd nearly settled completely into her new flat; the walls were still bare, something that she normally couldn't stand, but the patterned wall paper made it just bearable.

As she sat there, Molly began to fidget. She'd always hated being idle, and it was even worse now that she had no choice.

**..**

Sherlock descended the stairs to the ground floor of 221 Baker St., intent on Mrs. Hudson's flat. More like Mrs. Hudson's kitchen, and when he said Mrs. Hudson's kitchen, he really meant her refrigerator. John hadn't taken the time to do their shopping, and only a few minutes before, Sherlock found himself starving; a feeling that reminded him that it had been nearly three days since he'd last consumed anything but tea and coffee. He slowed as he began walking past the open door of Molly's flat, something that was a rare sight these days; since her return to Baker St., Molly normally kept her door firmly shut and locked.

Just as he was about to peer inside to make sure everything was alright (he was sure it was, surely he'd _know _if anything were amiss. Not that he had before… a shake of his head, and Sherlock altered his thoughts.) he received a face full of what appeared to be a fitted sheet. One that he recognized; a floral pattern that Molly had always preferred _before_. He disentangled himself and peered into the apartment, only managing to just duck out of the way as Molly threw another sheet over her shoulder, toward the open doorway. He quickly surmised that Molly was intending to get rid of her bed. She was sorting through different paraphernalia; sheets, pillowcases, blankets, throw pillows, choosing what she would keep and discard. The outcasts were flung from sight, and Sherlock knew that Molly intended to donate them to one of the charity shops in the city.

As he so often found himself doing lately, Sherlock offered his assistance. "I can move your bed down to your old flat." He paused when Molly jumped, clearly startled, and twisted to look at him. "If you'd like." Molly's eyes were wide, and Sherlock should have known better than to sneak up on her like he had.

After a few moments of getting her breath back and calming the pounding of her heart, Molly said, "Alright."

**..**

Only slightly surprised to hear the sounds of loud crashing followed by colorful cursing, John Watson calmly extracted his keys and closed the front door of 221 Baker St. He followed the noise to the open door that led down to 221c, and peered down.

John rocked back on his heels and smiled. At the bottom of the stairs, Sherlock was buried under what appeared to be a queen sized mattress, all flailing limbs and grunts of exertion as he attempted to free himself.

"John." Sherlock's voice was muffled. "I can hear you moving. If you would be so kind…"

They managed to move the rest of Molly's bed into the basement flat with little more incidents, but if John quite accidentally let bits of the metal frame collide with Sherlock's shins on more than one occasion, well… he felt it just a tiny bit justified. Small revenges, he'd take them where he could.

**..**

_**Three Months Later**_

**..**_**  
><strong>_

Darkness enveloped her in the still quiet of her bedroom. Molly turned over in the surprisingly comfortable pile of blankets she'd nested in on the floor of the still mostly-empty room. A good ten of them cuddled her comfortably, kept company by every single pillow she owned. She'd missed pillows, and had decided after Sherlock and John had helped her get rid of her bed, that she was never going to go without one again. If she'd gone a little overboard, she didn't really think anyone would exactly blame her.

The overhead fan beat cool air down to her, and Molly swallowed around a dry tongue. She kicked a layer of blankets off (favoring the right leg), and sat up. Her enormous nest of blankets was in one corner of the bedroom, and she used the wall to lever herself up. Feeling a little further down, her hand wrapped around the rubber grip of the metal cane. It had been John's once-upon-a-time, and after several successful sessions of physical therapy, he'd given it to her, for sentimental reasons Sherlock, of course, didn't quite grasp.

Socked feet rustled against the carpet as Molly slowly and steadily made her way out of her bedroom, through the sitting room and into the kitchen. She grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and leaned against the counter sipping from it, groggy and still half asleep. Molly had drained half the bottle before she screwed the cap on and began limping her way back into the bedroom, leaning heavily against the cane, taking her water back to bed with her.

Halfway through the living room lit only by the faint shine of the street lamps outside, Molly froze, heart picking up into a gallop in her chest. Slowly, hesitantly, she turned and stared wide eyed across the room; there was someone on her sofa. Someone was _lying _on her sofa. Molly's brows furrowed; someone was _sleeping _on her sofa. She looked around in a panic, searching for something with which to defend herself, but of course there was nothing. So she did the first thing that came to mind; Molly threw her half-empty water bottle at the intruder as hard as she could. With a startled yell, the unknown man flopped off the sofa and onto the floor, and then rose fluidly in a distinctly Sherlock-shaped tower.

"Oh, God!" Molly yelped, and the headlights of a passing car illuminated Sherlock's face as he leaned down to pick up the water bottle projectile. "Sherlock! What were you doing?"

"Sleeping." His voice was slightly graveled.

"I thought you were an intruder!" Molly pressed a hand to her chest, trying to calm the pounding of her heart.

"You thought I was intruder, so you threw a water bottle at me? I was right to stay."

"Why _were _you sleeping on my sofa?"

"This very thing." He handed her the bottle, and their fingers kissed, his slightly damp from the condensation on the plastic. "You should go back to sleep."

Molly blew her heavy hair from her face and turned back to her bedroom, clunking steps muffled against the carpet. "Warn me next time you're going to camp out in my sitting room, yeah?"

Sherlock sighed, and shook his head. "I've been out here nearly every night for the past three months. You really should be more alert."

A small smile curved her lips as she passed through her bedroom doorway. "Goodnight, Sherlock."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: And that is the end of the first installment. Make of it what you will. <strong>

**I had intended for this story to be much longer, but it just didn't happen that way. To be honest, I'm not _exactly _sure what in the hell _did _happen with this. I'm sorry if anyone is disappointed, but Teeth-verse will be picked up in a second part, I'm just not sure when. **

**I'm working on several other Sherlock fandom stories; more than I can really remember at the moment, including a collaboration with the lovely Petra Todd, so look out for more new stuff. **

**Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, favorited, alerted, blogged about and supported this story, and I'll see you in part Two- be there, or be square. **

**Mrs. Monster**


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